What follows is negotiation after negotiation on withdrawing from each and every European Union structure to which the U.K.is a part, and perhaps one of the biggest issues of debate will be access to markets, as well as immigration and agricultural policy.
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The future is too murky at this point for precipitate action, and the odds are that Britain is going to be an European Union member, subject to its rules and entitled to its benefits, for several more years, at least.
US President Barack Obama insisted the UK’s “special relationship” with the US would endure despite the vote, despite previously warning Brexit would put Britain at the “back of the queue” for trade deals.
And Britain’s departure from the European Union will be slow and painful.
The London stock market suffered steep losses at the open, but recovered to finish down 199 points or minus 3.1 per cent. Bank stocks suffered badly, while some housebuilders shed a quarter of their value amid forecasts of a United Kingdom recession.
Seems Merkel may just be accepting reality. It ultimately will determine the pace and direction of this divorce.
European leaders reacted to the news that the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union. Invoking Article 50 triggers a two-year period of negotiations after which Britain is automatically out unless the European Union votes to extend the negotiations.
EU Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and other top EU officials issued a statement Friday calling on Britain to act “as soon as possible” to avoid uncertainty.
POLITICAL FALLOUT: Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the referendum and led the “remain” campaign, said he would resign by fall.
“We clearly need somebody who the public think of as an alternative prime minister”, Field told BBC radio. “They’ve sent a strong signal to the country”, he says, “and the populist politicians that got this referendum on the table were obviously capitalizing on these feelings of not being in control and being at the mercy of this big process”.
Boris Johnson, a likely contender for Mr. Cameron’s job, has suggested that he agrees with the decision to delay the use of Article 50. This was a key factor leading to the decision to hold the vote.
Cameron announced he would step down to make way for a new leader by early October after voters opted to exit the 28-nation alliance in defiance of his predictions of economic disaster and isolation.
Authorities ranging from the International Monetary Fund to the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have warned that a British exit will reverberate through a world economy that is only slowly recovering from the global economic crisis.
With characteristic caution, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said only that Britain’s exit talks should not “drag on forever” and that until they were completed, Britain would remain a fully-fledged European Union member “with all the rights and responsibilities”.
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That’s not necessarily the end of things, however, with Scotland’s First Minister calling the Brexit referendum “democratically unacceptable”, and vowing that the Scottish government would immediately move toward another independence referendum.
