Founding EU members are to hold a crisis meeting Saturday on the future of the bloc after Britain´s seismic vote to leave the union and the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron.
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Britons, many of them anxious by immigration, decided 52 percent to 48 percent in favour of quitting the bloc, a margin of more than one million votes, according to final results from Thursday’s referendum.
The British pound fell as much as 10 percent against the USA dollar on Friday to levels last seen in 1985 on fears the decision could hit investment in the world’s fifth-largest economy, threaten London’s role as a global financial capital, and usher in months of political uncertainty.
Britain’s big banks took a 130 billion dollar battering, with Lloyds and Barclays falling as much as 30 per cent at the opening of trade.
Only hours after the vote tally Thursday, with 52 percent in favor of leaving the European Union and 48 percent against it, Cameron announced his resignation from the steps of 10 Downing Street.
He said he informed Queen Elizabeth II of his decision, adding that the will of the British people “must be respected”.
The EU was the world’s biggest single market and “Britain has just cut its ties with that market”.
The EU arose out of the ashes of two world wars to unite a continent and now faces the challenge of maintaining economic and political unity without Britain, which has the EU’s biggest financial center, a U.N. Security Council veto, a powerful army and nuclear weapons.
Older voters backed Brexit but the young and well educated mainly wanted to stay in the EU.
Senior EU politicians, rattled by a result that few saw coming, told Britain on Saturday to hurry up and trigger the formal exit process – something the United Kingdom insists won’t happen for several months.
The bookmakers” favourite to replace him is former London mayor Boris Johnson, a rival from within his ruling Conservative Party who was the “Leave’ camp figurehead. “I will do everything I can as prime minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months, but I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination”. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was expected to make a statement following a meeting with lawmakers in Berlin.
Also today, the UK’s European Commissioner Lord Hill said he will stand down, and said “what is done can not be undone”.
US presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose own rise has been fueled by similar anger at the political establishment, called the vote a “great thing”.
The vote will initiate at least two years of divorce proceedings with the European Union, the first exit by any member state.
“I would like to get started immediately”.
“I feel angry. Those who voted leave, they’re not going to fight the future”, said Mary Treinen, 23, a technological consultant who lives in London’s trendy Shoreditch district.
“We take note of the British people´s decision with regret”.
Meanwhile, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will meet her Cabinet on Saturday to discuss the country’s next move. “I did not think we would come out”, she said in central London.
Donald Trump praised the decision during a visit to one of his golf courses in Scotland, saying Britons “took back their country”.
The EU sends to their laboratories some of the most brilliant minds in the world, scientists said.
“We’ve done it! We’ve won!” anti-EU campaigners shouted at the festivities in an office block in Westminster, popping open champagne bottles as “Leave” victories flowed in.
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For instance, the official Vote Leave campaign claimed the European Union was costing the United Kingdom £350 million ($468 million) a week, “enough to build a brand new, fully staffed. hospital every week”.
