Brexit: UK votes to leave EU in historic referendum

Apollonian

Guest Columnist
Live coverage: The Brexit vote

Link: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/live-coverage--the-brexit-vote-184037100.html

Britain has voted in its historic EU referendum. Also known as the Brexit vote, the EU referendum allowed Brits to decide whether to 'remain' or 'leave' the EU.

However, the vote count did not unfold as expected.

Initially, stocks soared and the British pound rallied as voters headed to the polls. After the polls closed, the early results reflected a healthy lead for the 'remain' vote, which is what most experts had forecasted.

But a little after midnight in London, or 7pm in New York, the 'leave' vote won in the district of Sunderland by a shockingly wide margin. And as more and more votes were tallied, more and more districts confirmed that voters wanted to make their Brexit.

The British pound crashed to a 31-year-low and stock market futures plunged.

Just before midnight in New York, the BBC called it in favor of 'leave.'
 
Re: Jews-media calls victory for "Brexit"--ZOG setting-up for economic collapse, blaming Brexit?

Brexit wins: Britain votes to exit the European Union

Reuters Reuters

Link: http://boingboing.net/2016/06/23/brexit-wins-britain-votes-to.html

[ck vids at site link]

From the Boing Boing Shop

A kiss goodbye. The votes are in, and Brexit wins. Britain has voted to leave the European Union.

The historic decision will change Britain's place in the world, “rattle the Continent and rock political establishments throughout the West,” reports the New York Times.

With 309 of 382 of the country’s cities and towns reporting early on Friday, the Leave campaign held a 52 percent to 48 percent lead. The BBC called the race for the Leave campaign shortly before 4:45 a.m., with 13.1 million votes having been counted in favor of leaving and 12.2 million in favor of remaining.

The value of the British pound plummeted as financial markets absorbed the news.

“Dare to dream that the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom,” U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage told cheering supporters just after 4 a.m. today London time.
 
Re: Jews-media calls victory for "Brexit"--ZOG setting-up for economic collapse, blaming Brexit?

Brexit campaign wins: Britain votes to leave the European Union

Date June 24, 2016 - 4:00PM 3712 reading now
Nick Miller

Link: http://www.smh.com.au/world/brexit-...leave-the-european-union-20160624-gpr3o0.html

London: Britain has voted to leave the European Union, in a shock referendum result that defied late polls and is predicted to hurt the global economy.

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party and for years the face of British separatism, said he hoped this "independence day" marked the beginning of the collapse of the "failed" European project, leading to a Europe once again of sovereign nation states.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, celebrates.
Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, celebrates. Photo: AP

As dawn broke over Britain, it became clear that the Leave campaign had won - just - the majority backing of a deeply divided country.

The rusting industrial, white working-class heart of Britain led a surge of votes for the island to break its legal and economic ties to Europe, and reset itself as an independent nation.

Motivating the vote was mistrust of unchecked immigration from Europe, analysts said.

Free movement of labour is one of the pillars of the union. But Leave voters feared immigrants were overloading Britain's health, education and welfare systems, pushing wages down and house prices up.

The pound took a huge hammering, hitting levels not seen since the 1980s, as the markets predicted trouble ahead for the British economy outside the EU trade zone, and ripple effects in Europe and beyond.

Economists have predicted a recession in Britain would result from the vote.

The Australian and US stock exchanges also dipped in response.

European political unionists feared the end of the "European project", the status quo on the continent since the Second World War.

No country has ever left the EU.

But the Leave camp were jubilant, with Leave.eu founder Arron Banks saying democracy would return to Westminster.

The vote is already being called an earthquake in the politics, and economies, of Britain and Europe.

Prime Minister David Cameron will now be fighting for his political life, having called the referendum and campaigned for Remain.

Some predicted he wouldn't last the day in the role.

He was expected to make a statement outside No.10 Downing Street later on Friday.

Rival Boris Johnson is expected to push to lead a government that will activate, for the first time, the European treaty articles that lead to an exit from the union.

People react to a regional EU referendum result at the Leave.EU campaign's referendum party at Millbank Tower, Londan.
Click for more photos

Brexit Vote

The UK votes in EU referendum Photo: Getty Images
People react to a regional EU referendum result at the Leave.EU campaign's referendum party at Millbank Tower, Londan.

LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 24: Supporters of the Stronger In Campaign watch the results of the EU referendum being announced at the Royal Festival Hall on June 24, 2016 in London, United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has gone to the polls to decide whether or not the country wishes to remain within the European Union. After a hard fought campaign from both REMAIN and LEAVE the vote is too close to call. A result on the referendum is expected on Friday morning. (Photo by Rob Stothard/Getty Images)
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But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will also be under pressure, as Labour's northern heartland resoundingly rejected his plea to vote Remain.

Some political analysts were tipping an early election - despite recent laws that enshrined fixed parliamentary terms.

The vote saw unexpectedly high turnouts for Leave in Britain's north, where disaffected working-class communities are suspicious of immigration and felt modern politics and economy had failed them.

The regions generally plumped for Leave, and, although London was a bastion for Remain, the turnout there might have been suppressed by torrential rain, which caused public transport chaos and saw some polling places closed or moved.

Scotland voted strongly to Remain, but turnout was much weaker than had been expected.

Scottish National Party politicians have foreshadowed the nation may push again to secede from Britain, in order to stay in Europe.

Northern Ireland also came down on the Remain side, due to fears of the effect that Brexit would have on the border with the Republic of Ireland.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has said he might have to bring down an emergency budget to deal with the vote's aftermath.

Labour's shadow chancellor John Macdonnell predicted the Bank of England would have to intervene to slow the fall of the pound.

He said the market might be reassured if the government promised to bargain for the best trade deal it could get with Europe, from the outside.

The EU's leaders in Brussels are expected to play hardball in negotiating Britain's exit, to send a message to other states that might be contemplating a similar move.

The result was another terrible night for pollsters, almost all of whom had predicted a narrow Remain win.

They had also failed to predict last year's general election win for the Conservatives.

Polling also caused Mr Farage to concede a likely Remain victory even before a single vote had been counted. He later "unconceded".

At 4am, before an official or media call of the result, he claimed victory.

"The dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom," he said. "This will be a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people.

"Honesty, decency, the belief in nation I think now is going to win."

The campaign was won by "damn hard work on the ground", he said.

"I hope this victory brings down this failed project and leads to a Europe of sovereign nation states.

"Let June 23rd go down in history as our independence day."

Matthew Goodwin, politics professor at the University of Kent, said the referendum had exposed a sharp divide in British society. It had shown there were social groups with very different values. The Leave vote was a "very loud and very clear message" that the EU and globalisation were not benefiting them and that Westminster elites were not listening to them, he said.

Sara Hobolt, professor at the London School of Economics, said the referendum had given the disaffected and disenfranchised a chance to stick it to the political class.

The Leave campaign had cleverly played the "people versus the elite" card, she said.

Some voted on the EU, some on the economy, some on immigration.

It came down to a question of whether people were more scared of uncapped immigration, or of the potential economic chaos following Brexit.

The referendum result has no legal power, but the government is expected to respect the result and begin the Brexit process.

More than 46 million people were registered to vote in the third nationwide referendum in British history.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/brexit-...pean-union-20160624-gpr3o0.html#ixzz4CTbnJ0gb
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Re: Jews-media calls victory for "Brexit"--ZOG setting-up for economic collapse, blaming Brexit?

Brexit: UK votes to leave EU in historic referendum

12 minutes ago

Link: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36615028

The UK has voted to leave the European Union after 43 years in a historic referendum.

Leave won by 52% to 48% with England and Wales voting strongly for Brexit, while London, Scotland and Northern Ireland backed staying in the EU.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage hailed it as the UK's "independence day" but the Remain camp called it a "catastrophe".

The pound fell to its lowest level against the dollar since 1985 as the markets reacted to the results.

The referendum turnout was 71.8% - with more than 30 million people voting - the highest turnout at a UK election since 1992.

Wales and the majority of England outside London voted in large numbers for Brexit.

Labour's Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the Bank of England may have to intervene to shore up the pound, which lost 3% within moments of the first result showing a strong result for Leave in Sunderland and fell as much as 6.5% against the euro.

'Independence day'

UKIP leader Nigel Farage - who has campaigned for the past 20 years for Britain to leave the EU - told cheering supporters "this will be a victory for ordinary people, for decent people".

Mr Farage - who predicted a Remain win at the start of the night after polls suggested that would happen - said it would "go down in history as our independence day".

He called on Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the referendum but campaigned passionately for a Remain vote, to quit "immediately".

But pro-Leave Conservatives including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have signed a letter to Mr Cameron urging him to stay on whatever the result.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who called for the UK to remain in the EU but was accused of a lukewarm campaign, said poorer communities were "fed up" with cuts and felt "marginalised by successive governments".

"Clearly there are some very difficult days ahead," he said, adding that "there will be job consequences as a result of this decision".

He said the point he had made during the campaign was that "there were good things" about the EU but also "other things that had not been addressed properly".

Former Labour Europe Minister Keith Vaz told the BBC the British people had voted with their "emotions" and rejected the advice of experts who had warned about the economic impact of leaving the EU.

Maps
Area-by-area in maps: See how people voted

He said the EU should call an emergency summit to deal with the aftermath of the vote, which he described as "catastrophic for our country, for the rest of Europe and for the rest of the world".

Germany's foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier described the referendum result as as "a sad day for Europe and Great Britain".

But Leave supporting Tory MP Liam Fox said voters had shown great "courage" by deciding to "change the course of history" for the UK and, he hoped, the rest of Europe.

And he called for a "period of calm, a period of reflection, to let it all sink in and to work through what the actual technicalities are," insisting that Mr Cameron must stay on as PM.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that the EU vote "makes clear that the people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union" after all 32 local authority areas returned majorities for Remain.

Analysis by Prof John Curtice

London has voted to stay in the EU by around 60% to 40%.

However, no other region of England has voted in favour of remaining.

The referendum has underlined the social and cultural gap between London and provincial England.

Remain's defeat seems to have been primarily the product of the decisions made by voters living north of the M4.

Throughout the Midlands and the North of England the level of support for Remain was well below what was required for it to win at least 50% of the vote across the UK as a whole.

Britain is set to be the first country to leave the EU since its formation - but the Leave vote does not immediately mean Britain ceases to be a member of the 28-nation bloc.

That process could take a minimum of two years, with Leave campaigners suggesting during the referendum campaign that it should not be completed until 2020 - the date of the next scheduled general election.

The prime minister will have to decide when to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which would give the UK two years to negotiate its withdrawal.

Once Article 50 has been triggered a country can not rejoin without the consent of all member states.

Mr Cameron has previously said he would trigger Article 50 as soon as possible after a Leave vote but Boris Johnson and Michael Gove who led the campaign to get Britain out of the EU have said he should not rush into it.

But they also said they want to make immediate changes before the UK actually leaves the EU, such as curbing the power of EU judges and limiting the free movement of workers, potentially in breach the UK's treaty obligations.

The government will also have to negotiate its future trading relationship with the EU and fix trade deals with non-EU countries.

In Whitehall and Westminster, there will now begin the massive task of unstitching the UK from more than 40 years of EU law, deciding which directives and regulations to keep, amend or ditch.

The Leave campaign argued during a bitter four-month referendum campaign that the only way Britain could "take back control" of its own affairs would be to leave the EU.

Leave dismissed warnings from economists and international bodies about the economic impact of Brexit as "scaremongering" by a self-serving elite.
 
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