The earthquake has begun. About 52 percent of British voters have decided to leave the European Union while about 48 percent voted to remain in the EU. These are not definite figures but close to the final calculations.
An EU summit is likely next week to work out how Britain might actually leave since the process of untangling ties might take several years. Exit by any country is unprecedented but there is an EU regulation that provides for a two-year period for disentanglement from specific agreements.
British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted that Britain’s famed bureaucracy has not make contingency plans for exit because most officials thought the Remain camp would win by a sliver thin margin.
Cameron may now be on his way out. Some expect him to resign in recognition of the huge snub to his authority and failure to win the Remain argument. In a manner of speaking, his leadership has been disavowed by slightly more than half of British voters.
It is too early to say whether upstart Nigel Farage, the disruptive leader of the UK Independence Party, will suddenly become the rallying personality for voters and, thus, drive the final nails that thoroughly weaken the stalwart and historic Conservative Party.
This cannot be ruled out since Tories had already split between those who favored Cameron and his Remain camp and those who sided with Tory leaders like Michael Gove, who compared economists warning against Brexit to experts in the pay of Nazis.
In recent days, Farage’s UKIP inflamed opinions with its huge “Breaking point” poster that showed hordes of Arab-looking mostly brown people storming British borders. Intellectuals said the poster was racist but it may have tipped the scales in favor of Brexit on the last straight.
Some analysts continue to suggest that most Tories will rally around Cameron and Chancellor George Osborn (who is Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister), allowing them to stay in their jobs during the separation process from the EU.
But it is very unlikely that either will survive until the 2020 general elections. Both have failed miserably because neither succeeded in properly explaining to ordinary voters why being in the EU is beneficial for Britain.
These are early hours in the seismic changes so there are no convincing explanations about how the British economy might absorb the inevitable dangers of Brexit.
Farage and others have not yet said anything coherent other than wishful thinking about Britain remaining in the EU’s single market and enjoying all current trade benefits despite having huffily rejected EU membership.
Brexit supporters continue to insist that the EU needs to trade with Britain as much as Britain needs European markets.
They forget that Britain is a $3 trillion economy compared with EU’s $12 trillion economy (excluding the UK). European markets contain 400 million people, compared with 65 million in Britain (including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).
The biggest uncertainty involves the reaction of financial markets. The British pound has already fallen to a three decade low and equity and other financial markets might react violently when they open later today.
In any case, the narrow margins show that nearly half of Britain’s people oppose the views of the other half. That makes for extremely difficult negotiations amounting to severe turmoil on almost everything about Britain.
However, what that “everything” means is still unclear because nobody seems to have thought through all the implications of Brexit for ordinary Britons. There will be much muddling through in coming days, weeks, months and longer. And probably much regret.
Even leaders who vigorously campaigned for Brexit seem overwhelmed that they actually won and have so far not said anything real-world on such emotionally-charged issues as immigration, corporate taxation and tax evasion.
Still as Farage declaimed, the vote marks Britain’s “independence day” from Europe. But he might yet rue the results because Britain will certainly be weaker on its own, separated from the EU’s collective bargaining power on issue after issue.
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