Among its many distortions and misrepresentations, the Leave campaign’s favourite lie is that Britain pays £350 million a week to the European Union.
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The frenzied campaigning culminated Wednesday night in a live TV debate moderated by veteran anchorman Jeremy Paxman.
The Vote Leave campaign frontman said he had no regrets over the way the referendum battle had been fought by his side – and claimed the “Project Fear” tactics from the Remain camp had been a mistake.
Britain would next need to tell the European Union that it wants to go – this notification would spark the two-year process of Britain’s political divorce.
“If we want a bigger economy and more jobs, we are better if we do it together”, said Mr Cameron.
But the two sides remained deeply opposed and the audience split among equally vocal “Remain” and “Leave” crowds.
Former London mayor Boris Johnson, a Conservative whose decision to join the Vote Leave camp was widely seen as doubling as a challenge to Mr. Cameron’s leadership, told his Twitter followers that Thursday would be remembered as “our Independence Day” if the United Kingdom voted to lead the EU.
The outcome of the referendum is uncertain, with polling agencies reporting swings between the Leave and Remain camps in the past few days.
Around 1030 GMT, London’s benchmark FTSE 100 was up 1.5 percent, while eurozone indices had gains of 2.3 percent.
The pound was up 1.1 percent on the day, at $1.4874, the highest level so far this year. Betting market Betfair said the probability that the country would stay stood at 84 percent. Other European stock markets were up nearly 2 per cent.
Experts say that an exit from the European Union would hurt the pound as well as global stock markets, at least in the short term. That’s a reference to England’s third goal in its 1966 World Cup final victory, which Germans maintain didn’t cross the goal line.
The Environment Agency has issued four flood warnings and 22 flood alerts across the southeastern part of the country. The turnout is considered to be critical as there are a number of undecided voters, who might go for the status quo favouring the “remain” campaign. London’s Fire Brigade received hundreds of calls of weather-related incidents early Thursday, including some reports of flooding and lighting strikes.
Cameron negotiated with European leaders this year to secure improved terms of membership in the bloc if Britain stays in the EU.
Financial markets have been volatile ahead of the vote, with opinion polls suggesting a tight race.
He told BBC Breakfast: “Immigration is a challenge and I think the debate last night showed that the leave campaign admitted they wouldn’t solve the immigration challenge by leaving the European Union, but there would be a massive challenge for our economy – we would have fewer jobs, we would have less revenue, less ability to build the schools and hospitals that we need”.
The question that no one seems to have asked is: Why did we shed so much blood and misery in two world wars, for “Freedom Democracy and Liberty” only to give all this away to an unelected dictatorship in Brussel’s?
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Polling stations across the United Kingdom opened at 7 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET) and will close at 10 p.m. (5 p.m. ET), with the first results expected about midnight (7 p.m. ET).
