Unofficial surveys published after polls closed at 10pm indicated that Britons would vote to stay in the European Union by a small margin. It was not a decision that was taken lightly, not least because so many things were said by so many different organisations about the significance of this decision.
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A vote to leave would send decades of European integration into reverse, marking the first time an independent nation has broken away. They also become less profitable when bond yields fall, since that lowers interest rates on many kinds of loans such as mortgages. Britain’s FTSE 100 dropped 3.1 percent.
“It’s a vindication of 1,000 years of British democracy”, commuter Jonathan Campbell James declared at the train station in Richmond, southwest London. Bond prices surged and yields fell. The yield was last at 1.5353 percent. As reported by the BBC, the leader of the UKIP, Nigel Farage, who led the Brexit camp, is decidedly very happy after seeing his country vote for an exit he had demanded for 20 years.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who called for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union but was accused of a lukewarm campaign, said poorer communities were “fed up” with cuts and felt “marginalised by successive governments”.
The easy part of the process is untangling Britain from the EU.
Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said he spoke to the members of the European Council about the possibility of the Brexit and that “on behalf of the 27 leaders I can say we are determined to keep our unity at 27”, calling the EU “the framework for a common future”.
Speaking to media, outside his Downing Street office, David Cameron said, “I do not think it would be right for me to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination”, he told reporters.
Cameron, who choked back tears, gave no detailed timetable but said there should be a new leader by the time his Conservative Party holds its annual conference in October. “Short term he is going to need to get a grip, reshuffle his cabinet and address the pressing issues of Scotland, Northern Ireland and the financial markets, where there is going to be some short-term volatility”.
The British pound plunged to 31-year lows, stock markets around the world churned, and the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, stepped forward to reassure markets and bankers that nothing will be changing immediately. Billions of dollars were wiped off European banks’ market value, with Britain’s Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group among the biggest fallers.
Cameron resigns in the wake of leading the support base who believe that Britain would be better off to remain within the EU. The British government must notify the EU of its intention to withdraw from the union, which will trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, one of the EU’s fundamental documents.
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The result triggers a new series of negotiations that is expected to last two years or more as Britain and the European Union search for a way to separate economies that have become intertwined since the United Kingdom joined the bloc on January 1, 1973.
