UK votes to leave EU - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36615028 <comment><USER6> A very sad day for everyone in Europe. The EU is not only about trade regulations, but about a continent who had a not very peaceful history finally growing together. The freedom of movement for European citizens was not only "convenient" but in fact an important civil right. When you live or have a business in one state of the US, you are bound to local regulations of course, but being part of the US granted you a lot of fundamental rights and freedoms. In my eyes, the EU was very much about the same thing. It didn't matter in which part of the EU you lived or had your business. Being part of the EU granted you rights and equal access to the rest of Europe.

The EU in my eyes should aspire, to what the US has achieved already, being a large region, composed of quite a lot of different states, which are united, so that there are no arbitrary geographic borders limiting the freedom and the rights of the individual. This is not always easy, and it means, that the richer parts have to give to the poorer, but that is just basic humanity.

Especially I am sad for the young generation in the UK. A very large part (about 75%) voted to stay in Europe, and this future is taken from them. I would guess no small part of them will try to move to the remaining EU states.

<comment><USER7> The US did not magic itself into existence as a united state. It began in common purpose with a shared, very strong, external enemy. It then assigned itself a shared dream of settling the content. And, crucially, it already had a shared cultural identity, shared language, and shared religion when it began.

The EU does not have a common enemy to force it together. It does not have a shared language, or culture, or identity. Its dream, while noble, does not speak to ordinary people. And it is pretty damned incompetent at what duties it _has_ assigned itself.

The prospect of a United States of Europe was extremely remote even before today. It's dead, now.

<comment><USER8> I don't agree with that, the EU has a very strong cultural union that was created by the enunciation of the French Revolution principles. It's not by accident that, for example, there is no state in EU with death penalty. This makes states within the EU very similar at certain levels, otherwise a claim could be made that the cultural delta is the same between two different EU states and between an EU state and US, but this is not true, if you check a bit the fundamental values you'll see that EU nations have a lot in common.

<comment><USER7> What culture do Germans, Greeks, Latvians, Bulgarians, Fins, and Spaniards share? It takes more than vastly differing attachments to a vague sense of liberalism and a desire to not blow the continent to high hell again.

<comment><USER9> Latin

<comment><USER10> Finnish is one of the few European languages with no connection to Latin

<comment><USER11> One of two, I believe. The other being Hungarian.

<comment><USER12> Celtic languages, Estonian is another Fenno-Ugric one, Sami, there are lots.

<comment><USER13> Celtic languages (Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Manx, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton) are all distantly related to Latin, and probably closer to Latin than other branches of Indo-European.

Basque is a language isolate spoken in parts of Spain and France. There's also Turkish - part of Turkey is in Europe, but not in the EU.

<comment><USER14> I live in Ireland and I can tell you Irish has very little to do with Latin. Those who say Hungarian is hard have never been here.

<comment><USER13> An bhfuil Gaeilge agaibh? I was correcting someone who didn't think that the Celtic languages and Latin were in any way related. That is not true: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo- Celtic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo-Celtic) explains this, even if the similarities are no longer obvious. Hungarian is unrelated to Latin.

<comment><USER14> No, I'm Brazilian/Hungarian. I've been here for months and still can't even figure out the structure of sentences, much less their meaning (unless it's obvious from external clues). I've always thought of myself as having a knack for languages, but Ireland humbled me. I can write Klingon, but I wouldn't be able to read safety warnings on the train were they not also written in English below.

Which makes me want to put up some bilingual fake warnings with jokes written in Irish and innocent information written in English as if it were a translation from the text above.

It'll be fun to learn Irish from my daughter as she starts school in the next months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As other comments have noted, the point is that the EU will not want to give the UK a good deal on leaving, because the EU does not want to give any encouragement to the other countries which want to leave the EU (some of which want to leave more strongly than the UK do - apparently).

Secondly, why would the UK end up with a Norway or Switzerland deal, when the UK is the 5th largest economy in the world? This is unprecedented. This isn't some one sided negotiation.

The EU needs the UK. If you sift through the garbage press, you'll see that the BDI in Germany - "The Voice of German Industry" \- says that trade curbs against the UK would be "foolish". Of course they would be! Do you know how many German cars are sold in the UK each year?

"About a fifth of all cars produced in Germany last year, or around 820,000 vehicles, were exported to the UK, making it the single biggest destination by volume." Source: FT.com

"The UK is the fourth-biggest export market for German engineering companies, with sales of €6.8bn last year." Source: FT.com

The scaremongering goes on even after the vote has been called...

<comment><USER16> _" The EU needs the UK"_

Not true. It is the reverse because the UK runs a gigantic trade deficit: in 2014 they exported 472 billion USD, but imported 663 billion USD¹. In fact the UK is the second country in the world with the largest trade deficit (behind the US). A huge portions of UK's export go to Europe, therefore the EU has definitely more _say_ when it comes to negotiating trade deals with the UK. I would be very worried for my economic future if I were a UK citizen...

¹ [http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/gbr/](http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/gbr/)

<comment> UK-AL UK importing tons of good from EU means that the uk is generating a lot of jobs for EU countries.

<comment><USER17> However, the UK economy is relatively small compared to other EU export markets. Specifically, this means that as a percentage of the total, it's not going to move the needle nearly as much as it will in the UK.

It's definitely going to hurt, but it's nothing like the pressure that will be on the UK.

<comment> UK-AL I don't understand. If they don't want job losses, they have to trade with us.

I'm expecting most EU countries wanting avoid as many job losses as possible.

Doesn't really matter who's got the most leverage. The optimum strategy for both is low/no tarrifs

<comment><USER18> Tariffs aren't the only factor in the assumed business losses, and they're probably not the biggest.

It's the loss of things like financial services companies based in London being able to readily "passport" their services into other EU countries without relying on local branch offices somewhere in the EU that will really hurt.

When it comes to passporting rights, it's very much in the interests of the EU to tell the UK to bugger off, and let the London HQs relocate a whole bunch of jobs to Frankfurt or Paris or Tallinn if they want to carry on doing business with EU nationals. This is likely bad if you work in some London-based back office role for a big European bank; _really_ bad if you're a London-based fintech startup aiming to serve most European markets.

<comment><USER19> So the net "winner" for financial services might be Germany? If I were looking for a new financial head office, I would be inclined to locate it in the EU's largest and most stable economy, right?

<comment><USER20> London is only the financial powerhouse it is because of its dubious status as the least regulated economy with access to the EU market. If they lose said access, that role naturally goes to Luxembourg, the next-least-regulated economy, and that's where these services will move to.

<comment><USER21> just as an aside, Luxembourg is not really an unregulated economy. it's very popular for fin companies because in addition to access to EU, the regulators (so I hear from my peers in legal) are very proactive speaking to companies to make it easier to set up there, and are quite prompt and more flexible than other countries in assisting companies on ambiguity in interpretation of regulations.

<comment><USER20> Of course it's not unregulated, and neither is the uk, it's just that the regulations are more relaxed compared to the rest of the eu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We are all talking about economics but the whole deal is way more noble than mere money.

No European ever has never think "woow this shinny $consumer_object is been produced inside the EU so I don't get to pay the import tax" but every single European younger than 50 at least once in its life has open up the Ryanair website and thought "for 30€ I guess this weekend I will be in London/Paris/Berlin/Madrid/Rome".

The whole point of the European union is to be able to watch rugby with the English, get drunk in Berlin with good beer, being lazy at the seaside for a whole day with the Italians, have sex (or at least try to) with smoking hot French girls. And yes I can use the most stupid stereotypes because we all know that those are just stereotype and we can make fun of each other like only good friends can.

The most infuriating thing is that the oldest part of the English population is taking aways these opportunities from the youngest British.

<comment><USER18> > The most infuriating thing is that the oldest part of the English population > is taking aways these opportunities from the youngest British.

I think that's the second most infuriating part of it.

The areas of the country that overwhelmingly voted against "unlimited immigration" from Europe have predominantly the ones that barely received any immigrants. Whilst London, which is destination numero uno for EU migrants, overwhelmingly voted in favour. (the EU migrants themselves didn't get to vote)

Obviously there will be exceptions: rabidly anti-EU Boston, Lincolnshire actually does have more EU immigrants per capita than anywhere else and the British population is genuinely very unhappy about it, but assuming I can find a suitable dataset to run the analysis, I'm expecting _areas which disproportionately voted Leave to be almost perfectly inversely correlated with how likely they actually are to be "swamped" with EU migrants_

And make no mistake about it, there are plenty of other arguments that have been made for leaving the EU, but it's the one on migration that has got usual non-voters from council estates in Sunderland queuing to place their ballots, not concerns over banana directives, the transparency of EU political processes or enthusiasm about the opportunity to negotiate new bilateral trade deals with the Commonwealth.

<comment><USER23> I'd be very interested in seeing that analysis if you end up making it.

<comment><USER24> This analysis sounds close to what he's talking about:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/25/why-p...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/25/why- people-who-really-wanted-brexit-will-regret-it-most/)

TL;DR: "Polling showed the areas that had the most to lose and the least to gain from the Brexit are precisely those where the referendum saw the most support. In other words, the places — the most export-heavy regions —most hurt by the economic disruptions caused by Brexit could be the places that pushed hardest for it..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is Scotland going to be exiting the UK next? Guess we'll see in a few years.

Hard to know what will happen here, but I suspect once the UK (or what's left of it) signs a trade deal with the EU, they'll get the same deal as Norway - all the compliance with EU regulations, with none of the say. I suppose people may be happy with that deal, as long as they can get to say they're "free".

I'm hoping this somehow leave the EU in better shape, perhaps more cohesive, perhaps reforming in ways to minimize chances of anyone else leaving. As a Bulgarian (not living in Europe) this makes me somewhat bitter - <USER2> Englishmen can't accept belonging to a club we also belong to.

<comment><USER26> I feel that the growth of Fascist sentiment worldwide can't possibly be a coincidence. Globalisation and it's benefits are being questioned.

People are disappointed. Even this vote , is actually a vote of dissatisfaction against the status quo. They just managed to direct enough of that anger against the EU.

I'd like to suggest the following three hypotheses and hear what you guys think :

1\. As growth slows , liberal democracy ceases to be the status quo. It's much easier for a demagogue to whip up sentiments against the "other" when people feel that they have been left behind.

2\. The media has always been a gatekeeper and helped keep the more extreme voices out of mainstream discourse. The internet breaks this dynamic and now disaffected majorities can coalesce across regional boundaries within a country.

3\. The Western working class has realised that globalisation doesn't seem to be raising everyone's living standards. It's more of an equalisation where large numbers of people in Asia are lifted into the middle class while the western working class stagnates.

This diagram shows a clear class divide in the voting: [http://i.imgur.com/SneDXWa.png](http://i.imgur.com/SneDXWa.png)

I don't have much more data to back these up so I'd be interested hearing any thoughts / anecdotes about such things around where you live.

<comment><USER27> Starting with 3:

Why should the citizens of a country be in favor of an economic policy that screws them in return for making the richest .001% of the population richer, and raising the standard of living for foreigners living in a mud huts to being slaves in a factory? This was apparent all along, but the people voicing these concerns were ignored or marginalized by the one sided economic voices in the media...

So to part 2:

The problem is that the economists you hear on the news telling you what needs to be done are wrong worse than 50% of the time (austerity, free trade with countries that don't have equivalent economies, you name it). In the US after Trump (who I mostly disagree with) started calling out Carrier for closing a US factory to offshore the production, I heard a couple economists taking about how if carrier didn't move all their production offshore no one would be able to afford an AC unit.

To which, I was frankly shocked. central AC units, which are mostly assembled from 3rd party components, many of which are already made in china/etc (unless you get lucky with a us built emerson/copeland compressor) are extremely high margin businesses. The assembly costs in the US are a tiny fraction of the installed price of a AC unit (which are dominated by your local AC installer). Worse, prices rarely decline when production is off-shored, rather the savings tend to go back to the execs and majority share holders. Or worse, are used to buy or block smaller more efficient competitors.

So, for a news organization to not vet this before allowing some doomsday economist to come on and talk about how the price of AC units are going to spike if carrier isn't allowed to fire a bunch of $20/hour employees in favor of a bunch of $5/hour ones, while playing tax games with the profits (aka book the majority of the profits outside of the US to avoid taxes) is just insane. Heck carrier has a gross profit margin of > 50% (its higher than Apple!).

Bottom line, I think pretty much everyone I know is now trained to disbelieve anything heard on the news from a self proclaimed economist.

<comment><USER26> I'm from India and I think most people would prefer having a stable job in a factory to starving in a mud hut.

And yes , the citizens of a country should not be in favour of a policy that transfers the lions share of the gains to the 0.01 %.

But overall , a liberal global order has been a good thing.

I blame the greed of the elites for (potentially) killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

<comment><USER28> > I blame the greed of the elites for (potentially) killing the goose that > lays the golden eggs.

Greed is a powerful addiction. The elites won't stop trying to concentrate more and more wealth at the top, even when they know it will increase the chance of something like Brexit actually happening (which cut their wealth, at least temporarily, considerably).

Addition is powerful because it's addictive.

<comment><USER29> Not sure if you're aware, but WE are the global elite. If you earn more than $34k per year, you are in the global top 1%.

So next time you negotiate your salary, or try to make more bonus at the end of the year, I want you to think about your addiction to greed. You just want to concentrate more and more wealth at the top, even when you know it will increase the chance of something like Brexit. Clearly that's your motivator.

If that doesn't work for you, try coming up with a more realistic model or how wealth actually moves, and what motivates people. Parables about the seven deadly sins make for entertaining and convincing story telling, but are not good models for reality.

<comment><USER27> The absolute amount a person is only loosely correlated with their standard of living. Especially when the amount of free time they have/etc is factored in.

Even in the US, 34K a year is a living wage in some parts of the country while in others its extremely hard to survive. Beside the obvious cost of living expenses for house, transportation, food, there is also the question of, how your making the 34k a year. If you can earn it in less than 40 hours a week you have time to supplement your income growing a garden, fixing your own car, or spending time tutoring your children. OTOH, if it takes 80 hours a week to earn that then you pretty much have to pay people to take care of all the little things you could be doing yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think this should be a wake up call for those of us who are American. Populist movements that rely heavily on anger, fear, and anti-immigration rhetoric can still be effective in western democracies even if a large majority of experts think it shouldn't and won't happen. This is the first time I have legitimately thought we might end up with a Trump presidency.

<comment><USER31> My thoughts as well - it's surprising (well, maybe not) to see how effective these populist movements are these days whether it's France (Front National), Germany (AfD), Britain (UKIP), Czech, Poland, etc. To me it seems that Switzerland is the only country where its population can be trusted with plebiscitary measures, referendums and other forms of rather direct democracy.

<comment><USER32> And yet Switzerland is much less immigration friendly than all the countries you've mentioned.

<comment><USER33> And yet switzerland has one of the highest percentages of immigrants. Switzerland has a foreigners share of ~24%. Except Luxembourg every other EU nation has less immigrants than switzerland. As an example, Great Britain has only ~8%.

<comment><USER32> The percentage of immigrants living in a country is a result of a long term process. I believe that what we are discussing right now is the 'refugee' crisis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So, devil's advocate here: Can someone explain to me why this is a bad thing? I feel like most educated people seem to think this is terrible (and the markets seem to agree), but to me, the European union seems like an anti- democratic institution that doesn't really provide much value.

I mean, don't me wrong, removing trade barriers is probably good. But won't the UK just be able to pretty quickly renegotiate basically similar terms again anyway? Are their trading partners _really_ going to stop trading with them or substantially alter their tariff schedules as a result of this?

<comment><USER35> Single market. Despite some bigots who don't want Polish people existing near them, having free movement of people, goods, capital and all the rest of it is really good for the participant economies.

Can you imagine if US citizens had to get a visa to move from New York to California?

<comment><USER36> I don't have a horse in this race, but the language you use ('bigoted') is way too strong…

The UK is a really popular immigration destination (perhaps due to it being a rich English-speaking economy and the legacy of its colonial empire).

Let's say the British public is willing to accept a fixed amount of immigrants. The UK can easily fill this up with high-skilled immigrants (Masters/PhD's in technical fields). Wouldn't that be better than accepting blue-collar workers from Eastern Europe? Are you 'bigoted' because I think a PhD from India would be better for the economy than a blue-collar worker from E-Europe?

It is high-time that the UK start re-engaging with its own commonwealth. This includes closer trade and immigration.

<comment><USER37> Yes, I think that is bigoted.. Why does the blue collar worker from Eastern Europe deserve less opportunity than a blue collar worker from Sheffield? How is discriminating against some group of people based on what country they were born in morally different than discriminating based on race?

<comment><USER36> > Why does the blue collar worker from Eastern Europe deserve less opportunity > than a blue collar worker from Sheffield?

Does a blue collar worker from India deserve less of an opportunity than a blue collar worker from Eastern Europe?

You may answer no to this (i.e., believe in completely open borders). But I think that the general public will not accept this.

<comment><USER37> I would answer no to it - a blue collar worker from india absolutely deserves the same opportunity as a worker in Europe.

I agree, we are a long ways from the public accepting open borders. I just think its important to point out - as a society we have rejected racism, but we are blind to the fact that exclusionary nationalism is it's strict moral equivalent.

I would challenge anyone who disagrees to come up w/ an explanation why racism is immoral, that does not also apply to birthplace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's amazing that such deep constitutional change will be achieved with such a slim majority. 48% of British people will be ejected out of the EU essentially against their will. The UK has always embraced first past the post voting, but it really shows here how it creates very discontinuous inflection points.

<comment><USER39> I've heard yesterday that the referendum itself is non-binding, and that Parliament is still in charge of the final decision.

Further Parliamentary lawmakers are supposedly mostly pro-Remain, so given the slim margin of victory it's not clear what will ultimately happen.

<comment><USER39> Backing up my response with a snippet from the BBC's referendum FAQ : [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32810887](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-32810887)

Could MPs block an EU exit if Britain votes for it?

Michael, from East Sussex asks an intriguing question - could the necessary legislation pass the Commons if all SNP and Lib Dems, nearly all Labour and many Conservative MPs were in favour of staying?

The answer is that technically MPs could block an EU exit - but it would be seen as political suicide to go against the will of the people as expressed in a referendum. The referendum result is not legally binding - Parliament still has to pass the laws that will get Britain out of the 28 nation bloc, starting with the repeal of the 1972 European Communities Act.

The withdrawal agreement would also have to be ratified by Parliament - <USER3> House of Lords and/or the Commons could vote against ratification, according to a House of Commons library report.

It adds: "If the Commons resolves against ratification, the treaty can still be ratified if the Government lays a statement explaining why the treaty should nonetheless be ratified and the House of Commons does not resolve against ratification a second time within 21 days (this process can be repeated ad infinitum)."

In practice, Conservative MPs who voted to remain in the EU would be whipped to vote with the government. Any who defied the whip would have to face the wrath of voters at the next general election.

One scenario that could see the referendum result overturned, is if MPs forced a general election and a party campaigned on a promise to keep Britain in the EU, got elected and then claimed that the election mandate topped the referendum one. Two thirds of MPs would have to vote for a general election to be held before the next scheduled one in 2020.

<comment><USER40> The scenario to have another election is logistically hard to organize: the expected deadline for the UK to exit is in 2 years. The time can be easily consumed by having negotiations on post-EU agreements.

<comment><USER41> But the 2 years start from the day when the EU is formally notified of the UKs intent to leave, not today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> For those of you outside the UK, please realise that this was not a xenophobic vote. Just because there were racist scum in the crowd voting brexit, doesn't mean all brexit supporters are likewise.

There are many reasons why people voted to leave but the journalism covering this seemed to only be able to cover the sensationalist parts of the debate in the most childish fashion. This needed a serious discussion amongst adults, with a lot of thought and we didn't get it.

So if it wasn't some racist backlash to immigration, then what was it? While I can't speak for all, here is a piece that explains many of the issues that people actually have with Europe, delivered in the serious manner that I wish more of the debate had been.

[http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2016/02/david- davis...](http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2016/02/david-davis- britain-would-be-better-off-out-of-the-eu-and-heres-why.html)

<comment><USER43> The quality of discourse was terrible.

Why did the leave camp stick to the 350 million argument after it had been so firmly skewered. There were many other reasons to vote leave that could have been discussed instead.

<comment> UK-AL Both campaigns are guilty of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm a Finn, and always thought that UK could be an interesting place to live some day. This decision completely destroys that possibility because moving to a non-EU country is not a realistic option -- I wouldn't go out of my way to look for bureaucratic headaches. Since the UK doesn't want people like me, I guess it will increasingly become another place I never think about.

This was a major win for isolationism, but it's not clear to me why an island wants to be increasingly isolated. When you're already geographically isolated, wouldn't you want to try to compensate against that by reducing mental isolation rather than actively reinforcing it?

Ultimate independence is when people forget you exist at all.

<comment><USER45> I wouldn't assume the UK "doesn't want" people like you there. I think they just want better say over who comes into their country.

It's very possible, and perhaps even likely, that they will look to implement a similar solution as the US has -- visas for skilled workers, to the extent they have a need for foreign labor, and there might even be direct relationships with high-tech hubs like Scandinavia.

But yes, there _will_ be added bureaucracy, and some people will choose not to go because of it.

<comment><USER46> >I wouldn't assume the UK "doesn't want" people like you there. I think they just want better say over who comes into their country.

Problem is if you want to say buy a house or something permanent like that then its comforting to know you're not at the mercy of same visa regulation. Thats is no gone & I'm also re-evaluating my plans to move to the UK. Sure I'll get a visa easily anyway but still the uncertainty unsettles me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Yet another example that immigration policy trumps pretty well all other concerns. This has played out several times in Australia. 5% of the population suddenly voted for a nationalist candidate Pauline Hanson who came from nowhere, had no policies, no credibility and no clue just because she was against immigration. Major political parties took note that day, and since then they have in various roundabout ways adopted a similar stance on immigration, knowing that it is electoral suicide to entertain reform.

It was sobering to see Brexit campaigners citing Australia's immigration policy as a 'good system'. In reality it is the opposite of courageous and humane government. But clearly, it's what people want...

<comment><USER48> Was immigration policy the only factor driving people's votes? Do you believe that over 50% of the UK population harbors ill will towards immigrant populations? What about the democratic arguments against the European Commission or the arguments against protectionist trade barriers? To distill the entire vote into a single issue is foolish.

I think it's easy to say that immigration and underlying racism or xenophobia were the cause for the result if you don't agree with the result. Comparing 5% of Australian voters electing Pauline Hanson is a far stretch considering that one vote was a general election, the other was a referendum and one result was 5% of the population and the other is over 50%.

Anecdotes of some campaigners citing Australia's immigration policy is not a strong enough argument to refute other fundamental issues that went into people's votes and is not proof of "Yet another example that immigration policy trumps pretty well all other concerns".

<comment><USER49> > Was immigration policy the only factor driving people's votes? Do you > believe that over 50% of the UK population harbors ill will towards > immigrant populations?

As a Brit living in the EU, yes this is exactly what the vote is about. The common Brit believes immigrants from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, etc came to steal their jobs and benefits and are the cause of all their problems. They believe by voting out it'll magically fix everything. Take a look at the media like the Daily Mail and The Sun over the last few weeks and see what they had to say about this topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The most interesting thing is the age distribution of votes: HOW AGES VOTED (YouGov poll) 18-24: 75% Remain 25-49: 56% Remain 50-64: 44% Remain 65+: 39% Remain

Read into it what you wish, but this really sucks for the younger generation who did not want this yet will be stuck with this decision, likely for their entire lifetime.

<comment><USER51> I find the younger are usually more naive and more easily manipulated. They're young, they'll live and adapt

<comment><USER52> Whereas the old remember the "good old years before all those funny Polish shops started opening".

Well at least it'll hit their pensions. Oh, wait, no it won't because most of them will have final salary pensions schemes the working generation is paying for and could never hope to have themselves...

At least they can sell their houses which have increased in value by 100%s of percent over the last 30 years. So the older generation (& working class) have fucked us.

<comment><USER53> Yours is a simplistic cartoonish and insulting strawman of the older generation.

Britain has been in the EU for 43 years, 65 year olds were kids themselves when it joined. Everyone in Britain has been in the EU their whole lives. Couldn't it possibly be to do with anything more recent?

<comment><USER54> The comment about the youth being easily manipulated was also frankly cartoonish and insulting.

If anything I see the reverse. Immigrant fears was the driving factor for the Leave vote. Given that UK tabloids have been doing quite a good job exploiting immigrant fears of late, who's being manipulated here?

The Donald Trump phenomenon has very similar parallels (build a wall!), demographics (white, leans no college education, leans elderly), and root cause (largely cultural discomfort). The rise of other far-right parties in Europe shows similar concerns.

This vote to me smacks of the decades of American Southerners (and others in similar areas) voting against their own economic interests in order to protect a race-based pecking order. As in the American South, now England. It probably won't be the last vote like this, either.

<comment><USER51> I don't. I didn't blanket all youth and make it a fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I voted today.

I work in London at a startup with international markets. I believe in the ideal of free movement. I think the EU is a bit of a mess conceptually and mechanically, but in general a step forward for Europe.

This is really the beginning of a very long, tedious and ultimately unsatisfying couple of years of dissatisfaction and instability as we negotiate with the EU and the rest of the world.

<comment><USER56> >>> ... as we negotiate with the EU and the rest of the world.

HA! Negotiate. If Britain want to shoot itself in the foot and unsettle the world economy, it can do so on its own. The EU need not concede on anything. Why should they, given that Britain won't be a voting member in a couple years. If I were France I would start bricking up the chunnel tomorrow.

<comment><USER57> > If I were France I would start bricking up the chunnel tomorrow.

Depending on how things turn out in France in the near future, they may be busy fighting "Frexit" sentiments in their own country. Le Pen has already brought up the possibility (granted, I don't expect her to be in power, but the idea is out there).

<comment><USER56> Unless seeing how badly it goes for the brits convinces them to stay. Over the next two years everyone who can will be moving money, property and family out of Britain and into somewhere more stable. This could be a real boom for France and Spain.

<comment><USER58> How bad do you think this is going to be? The majority of trade for the UK is with commonwealth countries and the U.S. both of which are unrelated to the EU.

<comment> T-A [https://www.uktradeinfo.com/Statistics/OverseasTradeStatisti...](https://www.uktradeinfo.com/Statistics/OverseasTradeStatistics/Pages/EU_and_Non- EU_Data.aspx)

Non-EU Exports for April 2016 were £13.0 billion. EU Exports for April 2016 were £12.0 billion.

Non-EU Imports for April 2016 were £21.9 billion. EU Imports for April 2016 were £19.1 billion.

<comment><USER58> My bad, it was much closer than I thought. I do recall that the majority prior to joining the EU was with commonwealth nations.

Regardless, it's not like materials to trade disappears... my guess would be the UK negotiates with the EU to basically keep trade the same. If not the UK will be increase exports elsewhere.

<comment><USER59> That's the point though - keeping trade rules the same implicitly means keeping things like free movement and acceptance of EU regulation.

It's far from clear that the UK will be able to sort this out easily.

<comment><USER60> Especially since the electorate thought they were voting against free movement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Contrarian opinion: I think Brexit's good for Britain. The EU is an example of the "tail wags the dog" situation which I think is similar to the way the American colonies felt about being ruled by Britain in the 1700's. Distant bureaucrats imposing rules not liked by the people they were imposed upon. For example the way the Germany / Greece situation worked out, with Germany feeling they had to spend money they didn't want to spend on Greece and Greece feeling like Germany was forcing them to impose austerity measures they really didn't want.

The British issue seems to be largely with immigration (foreigners working for cheap and bringing down wages for everybody else) and economics (Brits were promised the EU would bring them prosperity, and prosperity isn't in the room right now, so they want to leave). But it's the same sense of the British people feel they're suffering by rules were imposed by an external entity (the EU says they have to accept these immigrants and these economic policies even though they don't really want them).

The liberal opinion machine has done their best to paint pro-Brexit folks as racists, fascists, equating Brexit with Trump and Trump with Hitler. I think this is dishonest and not only slanders the conservative side, but reflects poorly on the liberal side as well (if calling the other side names is the best means of persuasion you have available, it says nothing flattering about the strength of your arguments.)

</comment><comment><USER62> The way Scotland voted "Remain" is pretty stark: [http://imgur.com/gallery/JjbEPZZ/new](http://imgur.com/gallery/JjbEPZZ/new)

I can see an Independence Referendum 2.0 being pushed through...

<comment><USER55> Can London too?

<comment><USER62> I jokingly said to my friend that we could solve a handful of complex problems easily - England* declares independence from the UK and leaves the EU, the rest of us get to remain. Since we're already in fantasy land, London can remain if they like :)

* = I am assuming the Welsh vote was due to a few of the Welsh lads being too exited by the Euros to vote, so they get a pass on being narrowly "Leave" this time

<comment><USER63> [http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/60388/could-london- declare-...](http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/60388/could-london-declare- independence)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> It could prove to be a bad, really bad decision for the UK. It could probably be a great gift to those who despise the UK in the EU. The british overestimate the power of their economy at this moment i believe.

\- They had the unique privilege of a strong, international financial sector within the EU, while simultaneously having their own monetary policy. This attracted foreign capital, and this capital will feel less safe now.

\- They profit massively from the import of EU workers, not just the low- paying ones. Lots and lots of academics were welcomed to the huge academic sector. These workers don't have familial ties to the UK, they can move to another european country easily.

\- They profit from having hundreds of thousands EU students in UK universities. They used this arm to export their ideas and technology. This means their influence in the continent will be severely limited now.

The resignation of David Cameron is a testament to what a big failure this is. I am still of the opinion that the referendum was more of a way to blow off steam for various issues , and the EU is used as a scapegoat here. Unfortunately, whatever the motives, in democracies decisions are respected. On the other hand, this presents plenty of opportunity for european countries, which stand to benefit from an inevitable shift of commercial activity.

PS. What is funny is that british english will no longer be a EU language, even though it is the most widely used language in europe. I guess we 'll start using the maltese or irish accents more often .

<comment><USER45> "Unfortunately, whatever the motives, in democracies decisions are respected."

Do you actually lament the fact that democracies respect the choice of their peoples?

<comment><USER64> No, i did not express any feelings towards that fact, and it's none of your business to quiz me about it anyway. Democratic decisions are not always optimal though.

<comment><USER45> It is my understanding that reacting to what other people write is one of the main points about a discussion forum, but we can agree to disagree here!

I do agree with you that democratic decisions are not always optimal.

<comment><USER64> Apologies for my knee-jerk reaction, on the other hand i don't think my personal convictions are of any relevance in this discussion.

<comment><USER45> Lol! Don't sell yourself too short here!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I still have severe doubts this will happen. It will take many years to renegotiate and most treaties will be in effect until then.

My guess is very little changes, it's more of a sign that people want their country sovereign as opposed to being ruled by a committee in another country.

<comment><USER65> Now this is an interesting comment. Does anyone have specifics about the timeline with respect to the treaties already binding the UK to other EU members?

EDIT: As mentioned elsewhere, here's an interesting summary with projected timelines: [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/504216/The_process_for_withdrawing_from_the_EU_print_ready.pdf)

<comment><USER29> This is a non binding referendum, so nothing HAS to happen at all. But all the party leaders have promised to abide by the result, with varying definitions of "immediately."

Once the PM formally starts the process, it must be completed in 2 years according to the Lisbon treaty. The end of that period is when the trade deals expire. There will clearly be preparation before they formally pull the trigger, but it's anybody's guess just how long it will be. There may be a change in UK leadership over this, and there are upcoming elections in France and Germany to consider. The Leave campaign has talked about 2020 as a good date to end the separation.

For all the treaties that will expire, trade will fall back to the WTO rules, which (to my understanding) are like the benches at train stations. They're arguably better than nothing, but very uncomfortable to sit on for any length of time.

IMO the market to watch is finance. Losing the free movement of money is an enormous blow to London as a global financial hub. Especially since the London and European stock exchanges are merging, it's possible the big investment banks will simply move to Frankfurt. The financial sector contributes 84bn to GDP (of 2.8tn), so there's a lot at risk there. So if any treaties get signed quick, it'll be the financial ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Unfortunately nationalism and populism won another war. Now watch Scotland make referendum to leave UK and after leaving they will join EU.

<comment><USER67> Is populism supposed to be bad? I just looked up the definition to make sure and it's basically the principle that ordinary people should have control over government rather than political insiders and wealthy elite. That sounds like democracy to me. Is there an aspect I'm missing?

<comment><USER68> From Wikipedia:

 _Populism is a political position which holds that the virtuous citizens are being mistreated by a small circle of elites, who can be overthrown if the people recognize the danger and work together. The elites are depicted as trampling in illegitimate fashion upon the rights, values, and voice of the legitimate people._

The notion itself is quite subjective of course, but it is definitely very different from "democracy".

<comment><USER69> It seems to be a pretty common stance taken by democratic political parties across history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> The average age of someone who is voting to leave is above 60, the average age of someone who is voting to stay is below 35. The older generation have voted for something that the younger generation did not want but are now stuck with. They have voted away their future for short term gains.

The sooner the baby boomers are all retired the better.

<comment><USER71> This becomes an interesting problem. What is the rational approach for a democratically smaller group which has the majority of future earning potential and is better educated ? (this holds for both the young and also for London). Do you leave? Do you back out of wider society and opt for minimal regulation and keep to your own sub groups? Do you grin and bear it as an obligation? You can wait - but the waiting period risks your current advantages.

<comment><USER70> Yes it is something that is quite interesting. There is a large disconnect between the majority of baby boomers and the majority of gen-x, y, etc. Baby Boomers are largely climate change deniers for instance.

Unfortunately, people who are making decisions right now aren't thinking long term. They are thinking about maintaining their own lifestyles despite saddling future generations with debt, climate problems, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> It's a domino effect looking forward. Other nationalist parties in other nations e.g. France will look at this result and try to leave as well. Scotland could easily leave the UK given that they wanted overwhelmingly to stay. It'll be interesting to watch how foreign UK citizens will be impacted with their jobs in Europe.

The consequences are huge.

<comment><USER73> "Frexit". I say that as a joke, but I can see that happening.

<comment><USER74> I'm still waiting on Texit (Texas).

<comment><USER75> In Germany we've been waiting for the Bavarian exit for decades now :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady What an absolute disaster. From what I've seen it was pretty evenly split (although a couple of points towards remain) in all age brackets up to 75+. People who won't be here in a few years when we actually leave have decided the fate of the country. If Scotland can do a deal with the EU to become a member if they can gain independence they'll win that, and the joint-ruling party in Northern Ireland is calling for a border poll as NI, like Scotland, voted remain (and the result is arguably going to have the biggest effect on Ireland).

In my opinion the biggest issue in this campaign has been the propaganda. Already Nigel Farage has been on TV admitting one of the campaigns ads was completely wrong and any one I've seen defending a leave vote simply has the response "we couldn't let things stay the same". On both sides, despite months of campaigning, voters are completely uneducated on the consequences of either decision.

</comment><comment><USER76> As an observer out here in Africa, I understand why the Brits may be fed up with the way immigration is being handled. The citizens of Europe are being told to be welcoming. However, there is no solution in sight in the home countries of the immigrants. When are all the wars in the Middle-East going to end? When are the African dictators holding their countries to ransom going to be replaced by good governments?

I purposely did not go into reasons why the said regions are unstable. At the end of the day the wars and governance issues need to be sorted out to stem the flow of immigrants. I don't think anyone has the answer. The solution is certainly not for the whole world to migrate to the "developed" countries.

</comment><comment><USER77> Although I do understand a lot of comments about how sad and bad it is for Europe and for growth of this European identity, I am also of the idea that if a country doesn't want to stay, well, don't. I am alright, it means that Europe will have more decision-making power. It was a pain in the ass every once in a while to assist to UK's requests and threatens. We can focus now on how to make a better Europe. And things will move - very slowly, but they will. That's how history is, after all.

Ah, just saying: the amount of refugees / people requesting asylum to UK is way less than in Germany/Hungary/Sweden just to mention some. This was _just_ a populist move/slogan.

<comment><USER78> > I am also of the idea that if a country doesn't want to stay

Vastly complicated by the fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland don't want to leave, and will in fact face calls for independence referendums as a result. They get significant funding from the EU in these disadvantaged areas, and I find it hard to believe that the London government will step into the breach and up the funding in the face of a potential recession, and a London- focus over regional focus from Westminster. I can foresee the end of the UK.

<comment><USER77> > I can foresee the end of the UK.

Be it, then. The world shapes itself continuously, and it will always do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I wonder if the EU will now say that Scotland can get membership if we vote for independence? Obviously they couldn't do that while the UK was in the EU, but now that the UK wants to leave and Scotland doesn't that view might well change.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland- politics-3659...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland- politics-36599102)

NB On a personal note I am _way_ more upset by this result than any other election or referendum I have voted in - even the first Scottish Independence Referendum.

<comment><USER80> I'd wager Scotland will want to leave the UK and join the EU. But I'd also wager that the backdoor deals made during the exit negotiations will prevent that from happening.

<comment><USER81> > But I'd also wager that the backdoor deals made during the exit negotiations > will prevent that from happening.

Who would make those deals and what is there to gain from that by those parties?

<comment><USER79> I can imagine that there will be a lot of negotiations over the next two years - I can imagine a UK government asking for conditions to be applied to a Scottish entrance to the EU with the EU government getting something it wants in return.

I can't imagine that our new, and probably far more right wing, government will be keen on Scottish independence and will probably take every opportunity to raise road blocks that will prevent it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Surprising that a simple majority is enough to effect such a massive change, one would expect that a supermajority would be required to change the status quo.

It's a sad day for the UK's younger generation who voted overwhelmingly to stay, the older generation, who will depend for their bread and butter on the younger ones has just made their life a lot harder.

Everybody that's gleefully celebrating will be in an excellent position to review their take on this in a couple of years when the real impact will be a lot more clear than it is today.

<comment> UVB-76 To play devil's advocate:

1\. Falling house prices (George Osborne estimated 18%, helped by rising interest rates) will help many, many young people get on the housing ladder. You can look at this as a massive redistribution of wealth from old to young;

2\. Although full of optimism while studying at university, many UK graduates have been crowded out of the job market by more experienced EU migrants, coming from countries with far worse unemployment rates.

3\. Young people didn't have much invested in the UK, and in many ways had the least to lose.

<comment><USER82> >Falling house prices

But we would need to look at the root causes of a fall in house prices. Is it because people will have less money to spend? If so, then it's not made housing any more affordable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I had been following the likelihood of a Brexit on Bloomberg. Before polls opened today, they said there was a 25% chance of the UK leaving. Seems they were quite, quite wrong.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-brexit- watch/](http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-brexit-watch/)

<comment><USER84> 25% chance of leaving is not the same as "they are definitely going to stay". I don't see how you can call a percentage based prediction "quite wrong" if it doesn't end up happening.

<comment><USER63> Agreed. They'd be wrong if they made a bunch of 25% predictions and the 25% predictions happened more than 1/4 times.

<comment><USER84> ah, thank you, that's what I was trying to say but couldn't quite figure out how to say

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> To understand how irrational the voters decision is, consider this story: here in Czech Republic, many people now "oppose the dictate of the EU" because as a part of consumer protection scheme introduced by EU Czechia's favourite margarine brand had to change it's name from butter to margarine. Only butter products can be labeled butter now and this has become a fuel in the increase of eurosceptics. Fubar.

<comment><USER86> That being said.. the fact that there are people in Brussels that probably spend hundreds if not thousands of man-hours figuring out what is butter and is not kinda illustrates what people don't like about the EU

<comment><USER87> I like having those regulations and the safety they provide, even if in many cases they might be too cautious. I don't trust companies, specially multinationals, to care for the consumers, their workers and the environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> That is a clear vote against a Europe that is not about democracy or peace, but solely about trade regulations and the interests of big corporations.

The people in Europe see, how many regulations just come from Brussels to be just acknowledged by their own parliaments and the democratic process is just circumvented. They see, how much is just for the benefit of big corporations and not for their benefit.

In Germany, we see, how the European idea is misused by our own politicians to bring up laws that they would not dare to let be voted on in their own parliaments. They just go to Brussels, let the law be decided there without much democratic intervention and than the law comes back into our country to be just acknowledged without discussions.

The European idea is (was) a good one. A really united Europe would be a good thing and also a strong one. But that is just an idea and not the reality. We saw it with Greece. We are not united. In the end, every nation is just looking on their own benefits and money. We Germans really acted shamefully in this situation and we already have a big trench between northern and southern Europe. Old sentiments and even hatred is growing again in the EU.

The idea was, to have a Europe, where never again will be war. We are now steering in a direction, where wars are getting more likely again, this time because of the EU and the Euro.

Is it good, that UK leaves the EU? No, it is not.

The only thing, I hope is, that the politicians might learn a lesson from it or the whole EU will break.

<comment><USER89> > *That is a clear vote against a Europe that is not about democracy or peace, > but solely about trade regulations and the interests of big corporations.

Agreed - but I don't believe it will affect the influence of corporations on Brits very much. They have a stranglehold on the UK government just as much as on the EU and a smaller entity is probably easier to influence.

The Brexit would be good for the EU, at least for those who want a centralized, more united, less diversified EU and have been complaining about disagreement on major policies, where GB has often had a controversial position.

<comment><USER88> You are right, that the Brexit does not help the British. But that is the problem with this voting, it is dominated by illogical feelings. The problem is also not the EU as such, but the governments of the EU countries.

<comment><USER89> I'm not so sure about the first part. The UK has a much worse trade deficit with the EU than with its trade activities outside the EU. Perhaps local production and consumption will become stronger and compensate loss of (some) EU exports. Wouldn't bet on it though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> I'm not from the UK and I don't have any problems with the Limeys but I still thinks this is awesome: For way too long national governments in the EU have passed legislation on the EU level when they could not get it through national parliaments and then they could refer to "the EU says so". I hope this serves as a wake-up call to national governments that they should actually listen to their citizens.

<comment><USER91> 52% of the country just asserted that there's only one party, a minor party, that agrees with them on this incredibly important issue. Everything in UK politics is going to change.

<comment><USER82> The one minor party won the most recent Euro elections, but FPTP locked them out of power at Westminster. And something like just under half of the UK ruling party's MPs supported Brexit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> The country that gave us the Magna Carta, literally the manuscript for limited-government liberty, has done it again, on (almost) its 800th anniversary! Super interesting days ahead.

</comment><comment><USER93> I blame the cookie law. You force millions of websurfers to click daily on OK buttons which basically say "EU make some bloody stupid laws" and you get some advertisment effect in the end.

</comment><comment><USER94> The UK and the US really head the current hegemony that is currently instilling so much war in the world. I believe the EU does share this responsibility, but I also really hope the UK leaving the EU helps the rest of Europe in in pushing back against these covertly back wars in Syria and elsewhere.

British citizens may not be able to world and live throughout the EU any more either. People already abroad may lose their work status on nations without reciprocal fall-back agreements.

This is a pretty big change, but I don't think it's a bad one.

</comment><comment><USER95> People of Ireland speaking here:

-Want to stay in the EU?

-Enjoy low corporate tax rate of 12.5%? Pro-business government?

-Enjoy friendly, well educated, English speaking, Pro-American people, good beer, decent music, nice quality of life, low crime and safe green natural environment?

Invest in Ireland -> [http://www.idaireland.com](http://www.idaireland.com)

This has been a public service announcement from the country next door. #irelandlovesyou :)

</comment><comment><USER96> This is what happens when major decisions can be determined a simple majority vote. What does 52 to 48 mean? It means UNDECIDED. Half the country feels one way, and the other half feels the other way. For a change this large, it should require at least a 60/40 vote. If the population is undecided, why on earth would you suddenly stop what you have been doing for the last 50 years (which has worked out fine) and go down a different path? There needs to be much more of a push in the other direction.

<comment><USER97> "What does 52 to 48 mean? It means UNDECIDED"

No. It means 2% more people wanted Brexit.

<comment><USER98> > "What does 52 to 48 mean? It means UNDECIDED"

> No. It means 2% more people wanted Brexit.

In traditional arithmetic, 52 is 4 more than 48, not 2 more.

<comment><USER97> In traditional polling terminology, this was a 2% shift

<comment><USER98> Yes, its a 2% shift, but 4% more people wanted to leave. than stay.

<comment><USER99> Nope. There's a difference of 4 percentage points, but that does not mean that 4% more people wanted to leave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> [quote]Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, has told ITV's Good Morning Britain that he thought it was a mistake for the Vote Leave campaign to say that it could save £350m a week by leaving the EU and that the money could go to the NHS.[/quote]

Well, nice to see that UKIP is wasting no time backtracking from the lies they sold this vote with.

<comment> UVB-76 Not that I'm an advocate for Nigel Farage or UKIP, but this is:

a) Conflating campaign promises (it was Vote Leave who made the promise, not UKIP, so Farage is not backtracking on anything);

b) Misunderstanding the nature of promises made during this campaign; there is no real 'official' leave campaign, and by voting to leave in the referendum, we have not elected any campaign group into power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> Am I the only one who kind of feel positive about this regardless of the negative consequences in the short term economically. I mean, democratically this is a landmark, the people have just decided to reject one of the biggest and most powerful government institution on Earth in a peaceful way, by voting. I don't think this has ever happened in the history of humanity that a people decided to say fuck you to a huge powerful government body and be done with it peacefully, just voting them out of their life. This in a way should be celebrated. I mean, the very goal of a democracy is the power for the people to do exactly that, remove and change their government institutions whenever they feel like it. It could also all turn out ok if the UK becomes a EEA member.

[https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*TD7RywMw4YnWGpfjR...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*TD7RywMw4YnWGpfjRpwKwA.png)

[https://medium.com/@WhiteWednesday/poll-reveals-eea- option-h...](https://medium.com/@WhiteWednesday/poll-reveals-eea-option-has- big-support-including-half-of-leave-voters-7b67bd50667c#.3nnfrtfhb)

</comment><comment><USER101> I'll take my UK company home to Germany at the end of the year. No need for a base in a non-EU-country.

<comment><USER102> If you're originally from Germany, you will be forced to leave the UK anyway. In a sense, getting people like you out of the country was a big part of the whole Brexit proposition...

<comment><USER98> > If you're originally from Germany, you will be forced to leave the UK > anyway.

Its amazing that you know what the terms of the exit deal that Britain and the EU will negotiate under Article 50 already.

<comment><USER102> There is no need for sarcasm. Of course nobody knows the terms already, but I'm talking about the rhetoric that was used to promote the Brexit. And "getting the foreigners out of the country" was a big one. All signs point to this becoming true, because these are the same people who will be spearheading the negotiations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> British Pound is at the lowest level since 1985 at 1.33 USD/GBP.

<comment><USER104> I wonder how many people would change their mind now because of this. If the pound keeps tanking, perhaps the market will end up forcing a bremain. Once again the financial markets behaving like a psycho bitch. Do you remember that one girlfriend that you knew was a bad idea but you just couldn't help yourself?

<comment><USER105> Well, that rate also puts a floor under a lot of domestic manufacturing (see how it has worked for China?), so a little bit more complicated that "gee, Miami is so much more expensive now."

<comment><USER103> Exactly. Low currency is great for manufacturing.

<comment><USER106> Not only manufacturing. It will become effectively cheaper to hire people in the UK from outside. We had a (too) strong Swiss franc for years now, and it's been a bane for businesses/economy.

<comment><USER107> sadly it's also become much more difficult to hire people from outside. also, isn't more immigration the opposite of what the leave campaign voted for?

<comment><USER105> Little more nuanced than that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> A bit of a naive question as I am fascinated by what is happening. I admit I don't completely understand so my question is if the UK is made up of England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland why aren't they represented at the European cup currently being held/played in France as the United Kingdom?

Why are they playing as separate countries yet voting together to leave the EU? I don't get it.

<comment><USER109> Because despite all the pointers to "definitions" to the contrary, the United Kingdom is but a single country, with a single passport, a single UN seat, one olympic team, one set of defense forces, and with a single central government only which can enter into formal agreements with foreign powers.

Any dissolution of power to "regions" like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is at the discretion of the central government, which can remove them at will.

The fact that it has separate sports teams is a weird throwback to history, now intended perhaps to largely confuse foreigners. (Perhaps a clever way to allow the UK to increase its odds of winning? :)

<comment><USER110> Not entirely accurate. The UK is technically a political union between England and Scotland, with both having separate legal system, currencies and a few other things.

It is in many ways more one country than two countries but to say Scotland is just a region is extremely inaccurate.

<comment><USER109> It is entirely accurate. The UK parliament is "supreme", and cannot be bound by previous parliaments. This principle is the basis of the UK constitution.

[http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/sovereignty/](http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/sovereignty/)

Until Scotland leaves the UK, any powers enjoyed by its institutions can be repealed or changed.

Of course in Scotland, the people could choose to be independent, and not be subject to UK parliamentary supremacy.

<comment><USER110> One supreme parliament that governs two countries joined by a political union, both of which have separate legal systems. Which is very different from most "regions", within most countries. Thus why your characterisation of Scotland as just a region is inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> There's a decent chance that this will spur the EU into proposing a package of reforms with a view towards a second referendum. Technically, this referendum was an advisory referendum (i.e. its result is not legally binding).

If that doesn't happen, I would expect the UK to shift from membership of the EU to membership of the European Economic Area (alongside Norway and Iceland) or similar.

<comment><USER13> Unlikely. Much of the resentment from Leave voters was over immigration from EU countries. The EEA guarantees free movement of people within it.

If there are further referendums, they'll be for Scottish independence, Irish unity and for Gibraltar to become part of Spain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> As a Swedish national doing business with clients in London, I fear the implications of this. As it were, I was able to stand up my business and start working with clients in London in a matter of a couple of weeks (with the lion's share of bureaucracy being Swedish, not cross-state.) No VISAs, no satellite entities, no special tax lawyers, just get a Swedish company up and start working with the UK. Done.

The EU may be flawed in many ways, but the free movement of people, goods, and services ain't one. Unfortunately, that flies squarely in the face of the leave campaign's "controlling the borders" message.

Sad day today.

</comment><comment><USER113> Can someone please give an unbiased summary of what this means and how it will impact the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world?

<comment><USER114> What does it mean? The Powers That Be have prognosticated every manner of doom should Brexit succeed. Despite that fear mongering, the threats and demands of all major political parties, many corporations and foreign leaders, the brave people of the UK have asserted their sovereignty. Over 72% of the entire electorate voted and produced a clear majority. That is monumental.

What happens next? Next is the shaming; the usual suspects will condemn the UK as an island full of racists. The political class will start trying to figure out how to achieve "Brexit-in-name-only." The BBC will come up with a story template they'll reuse annually telling how -- if they had it to do again -- a majority would vote stay. What happens next is the elites will figure out how to work around their subjects and nullify undesirable electoral outcomes, as they always do.

<comment><USER115> Reminds me of Penn & Teller's "biased as fuck, but fair" approach to skepticism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> Let's call the rising tide of politicians shouting "Our Nation First!" (And stage whispering "Our Race First") something like "the New Right". Not fascism per se but isolationist, anti-laissez faire and definitely anti-science.

So what is "The New Left"? Left wing politics in the UK is in disarray, Bernie Saunders espouses a vision that most of Europe sees as frankly old hat centrist, and there is no defining political viewpoint that is encompassing the (now dispossessed) young, the march of technology, the lessons learnt over communism and socialism.

Is the answer just to double down on democracy? Turn to your principles in time of trouble? We are losing the argument in open debate though. Just more "trust us, this is business as usual" does not seem to be a rallying cry.

Where is the intellectual core of what will oppose the New Right?

<comment><USER117> Direct democracy over representative democracy? Sousveillance instead of surveillance? A politics of abundance instead of rapacity?

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> I'll take my position as a "leave". In my opinion recent years has shown that power centralization brings a lot of harm. Even among our own government, I'll predict we'll find more value on powerful local and state governments.

</comment><comment><USER119> I truly do not understand our society. Europe is split, even if the countries aren't, the people are. Every political decision ends up being a race of the well-educated against the less-educated. The clash of classes happens not only in Europe, the Trump success is the same story. Maybe I'm just too young and uninformed to understand and that's how the world works ever since?

<comment><USER120> If you want to understand society better, start by accepting that there are well educated people on both sides.

<comment><USER121> In this case it's obvious that those were a minority on the 'Leave' side: [http://m.imgur.com/SneDXWa?r](http://m.imgur.com/SneDXWa?r)

<comment><USER120> So like I said, there are well educated people on both sides. University educated split 65/35 to remain. There are reasons educated people disagree with each other. My point to the parent being: on just about every single issue, there is an educated person on both sides with an argument. To try and claim the high ground for oneself by saying there are no educated people in opposition is either self delusion or political posturing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> Looking at the age split in the vote, if I were a young Brit I would be considering tax evasion as a form of protest. If the older generation wants a free ride while simultaneously cannibalising the future of the young, let em starve (in the sense of reduced government services).

</comment><comment><USER123> I have a particularly strong attachment to Scotland, and as most Scottish people have, I would have voted to remain in the EU, however messy it is, though I suppose my opinion on the matter has little relevance since I can't vote.

More interestingly, I find this is a telling example of the limitations of democracy as we know it. Democracy, very broadly speaking, ignores population clusters (physical or ideological) to the extent that the "voice of the people" is actually not representative of anyone's in particular. I've tried to educate myself about alternatives or adaptations, but I have to admit I haven't found anything especially convincing thus far.

<comment><USER124> All these limitations are(or were?) very well known facts. Modern republics(representative democracies), the existence of senates, all try to address this. Ancient Athenians had gone much further with the establishment of Sortition(random election of representatives).

We call random people to vote for issues out of their expertise and we enforce the rule of the majority to everyone.(what happens to the 48% who voted remain?). This is obviously ridiculous but everyone is brainwashed as we learn at school that democracy is like the biggest invention of mankind. Athenians at least were allowed to ridicule it all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> Britsh Turkeys just voted for Christmas. V sad day I am utterly depressed, sets back civilisation's progress by a generation. One lesson from this is - Never underestimate the stupidity of the majority. US will be next and vote Trump in.

</comment><comment><USER126> Going out on a tangent - Would California be more successful as an independent country rather than as a state of the US?

As things stand, California is currently the eighth largest economy in the world on their own. 17 of the top 30 U.S. tech companies are in California, which should come as no surprise. Tourism, entertainment, biotech, and agriculture are multibillion dollar industries already. Aerospace and defense contracts still rake in around $25bn a year. And many state business leaders are increasingly showing a real commitment to renewable energy.

Overall, while I believe there is definitely more potential for a social democratic style of government if California were its own country, the changes would not be that drastic. Barring a major collapse, California would, like Canada, still remain in the U.S.'s economic and cultural shadow. And who knows? Secession might be the best thing to happen to other states like Texas, New York, and Massachusetts. Who else would be capable of filling the void left in the energy, media, and technology industries? There is certainly upside in such a move but also a great deal of risk.

<comment><USER127> I mean, the US doesn't have the best history with secession…

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> The tech industry is going to be upended: investment gone, nearshoring companies essentially gutted of their cost advantages, and the London startup ecosystem severely damaged, since _a lot_ of tech workers in the UK are expats.

Might be an opportunity for some (am hopeful that the Web Summit moving to Lisbon will boost things here), but I'm not sure there will be any substantial upside for this anywhere...

</comment><comment><USER129> I don't really understand the reasoning either for or against this.

The default seems to be _non_ eu-membership. So why should Britain _stay_ in the EU? People are commenting on this as though it's really obvious.

<comment><USER63> Because Britain had access to all the good things about the EU (common market, EU agencies located in the UK, free movement) without some of the worst (common currency). 44% of British exports are to the EU. A significant reason for Foreign investment in the UK is because companies have seen it as a convenient way to sell in Europe (helps that it's the only English speaking nation in the common market).

And they voluntarily gave all that away. And they've simultaneously made a lot of enemies amongst their largest trading partner and closest neighbors.

I simply don't see how this works well for the UK (or should we say England, since the possibilities of Scotland breaking away have also risen dramatically).

<comment><USER130> Free movement is awful for the working class and great for the elites, which is the main reason for brexit happening. We want control over our borders and control over our laws.

<comment><USER131> Tell that to all the working class EU migrants we have staffing our farms, building sites etc.

<comment><USER130> I'm talking about the British citizens, no doubt free movement is great for the EU migrants because Britain is such a great country, but the mass influx of low skilled labour brings down wages and quality of life.

<comment><USER110> It's really a minor factor compared to lack of investment due to austerity. This is the frustrating aspect of it, that the working class brexitors have been blaming immigration for many issues and the remain campaign have failed to make it clear that austerity is a far bigger contributor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER132> The controlling political parties in rest of EU have huge interest of making Brexit costly to Britain even if it hurts their own country. If Brexit is successful and Britain improves then Euro-optimistic parties suffer future elections. Britain is having to negotiate with lots of countries interests, each controlled by political parties with their own agendas and trying to win against other parties in their next elections. Getting rid of eastern European immigration was main reason of Brexit now Britain has to get approval of countries whose population they just slandered in elections.

Its unlikely to have ANY deal between EU and Britain, there are too many conflicting interests. So the end result is that all the EU deals just end and there is no replacement deal for them. Problem is when lots of countries want to leave their own mark on the deal and lot of people in the deal making process has vested interest in making bad deal for britain and Britain really cannot approve such deals.

</comment><comment><USER133> Being selfish here, wonder how this affects US.

Even though on the surface EU and UK are alies and trade partners, it is not all black and white. I believe US will benefit because they will be able to play UK against EU and vice-versa to gain somehow. Say if EU doesn't allow import of US chicken they can go and try to persuade UK to not allow some import from EU in exchange for some other favor and so on.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if this strengthens US's stock market in short to medium term, as everyone will flee to US stocks due to perceived volatility.

<comment><USER134> Afaik the US barely exports to europe (especially your example sounded odd to me, i never saw american food on the shelf except cookies). I dont think it will affect the US a lot.

<comment><USER135> This is incorrect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_the_United_States)

The EU is the largest trade partner of the US.

And when ordered by US Exports, the EU is the 2nd largest trade partner after Canada.

I suspect the problem you saw was related to American Brands (for food) vs the actual company behind the food. Many foods are bottled/packaged in local plants, and/or resold under local brands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER136> One more thing: the UK was the official reason English is one of the languages of the EU (same as, on paper at least, with all the other languages). It will require some more fiddling to keep it so.

<comment><USER137> Luckily English is the official language in other EU countries as well. Ireland & Malta. [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Union#Official_EU_languages)

<comment><USER138> English is _an_ official language of those countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER139> Swede and EU citizen.

Saddened by this, but the people's voice shall rule.

What I would like to see is a more Swiss-style democratic involvement in EU. It is not for no reason many Europeans feel detached from what the EU does.

</comment><comment><USER140> I fail to understand how this is a referendum on migration as it is claimed to be. The movement of people with the EU is independent of the flow of people into the EU (the "migrant crisis" of the Syrian war for example).

So how is it about migration? Are UK voters afraid of eastern European EU migrants or is it something else?

If anything, being a part of the EU allows the UK to force migrants to seek asylum in the country where they entered the EU. Outside the EU I don't think they will have that possibility?

<comment><USER141> The working classes have seen wages depressed by eastern Europeans willing to work for less in skilled manual fields e.g. building. It's a sore point for many.

<comment><USER140> Understandable, but also completely unrelated to the recent surge of non-EU migrants. I get a feeling that populists try to connect these two things (refugees and lowered wages from EU migration).

I think the problem is related the weak labor laws of the U.K. (Compared to e.g France, Germany or the Nordics). UK workers can more easily be replaced and have less security when they are.

It's a complete failure of social democrat policies if the popular response to depressed wages is right wing populism rather than unionization and calls for stronger labor laws.

<comment><USER142> It's even worse: the NHS budget has been severely cut by successive governments, yet it was very convenient to blame European migrants for the NHS crisis even though reports have shown have shown that migrants contribute more to the NHS than they take out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER143> Would love to see what the people who were shorting european stock (expecting this outcome) made out with.

I think I read an article earlier today about Blackrock shorting like 50% of their european holdings or something?

</comment><comment><USER144> "When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world."

<comment><USER145> Please stop adding meaningless fluff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> I think the original EU (EEC) idea of a free economic trade zone was one that members could share and embrace. However, the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 went too far in "uniting" countries which do not have shared values, cultures and economic systems and priorities.

Now we have a two-tier Europe with rich and poorer EU states. Capital and investment leaves the rich states for the poorer ones because of low wages and costs, while population leaves the poor for the richer states for their higher paying jobs and generous social welfare support.

Guess where all the refugees and economic migrants want to live?

It's a reality that cannot be sustained.

</comment><comment><USER146> There was an earlier discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11964880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11964880), but that one was focused on the results in progress while this one is focused on the outcome, so we'll treat this one as current.

</comment><comment><USER147> To those who think the UK will be hurt more than the EU, I find it interesting that the FTSE (-8.4%) is down less than the DAX (-9.5%)

[http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks](http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks)

Obviously if you compound that with the pound losing 10% a FTSE investor is worse off. But my boss has met many investors recently and his feedback was that more investors were concerned for the future of the EU rather than the future of the UK.

<comment><USER60> The FTSE 100 is mostly companies trading globally, often just being listed in the UK.

The FTSE 250 is probably more representative of UK business as a whole and that is down more today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER148> Considering what parts of the UK preferred to stay and which preferred to leave, I wonder if overall the way to give the most people what they want would have been to leave the UK in the EU but have England leave the UK.

<comment><USER149> The UK is basically England. All the decisions are made there. England wouldn't leave the UK as much as disbanding it.

<comment><USER18> And the part of the UK most strongly in favour of remaining in the EU was London, which is the part of England where the decisions get made...

<comment><USER150> So we have a sort of layer cake solution. The UK minus England's in; England's out; London's in as an exclave; Buckingham Palace and Westminster are out as exclaves within the exclave, and the City of London, which as everyone knows is different from London, is in, but separately governed as _another_ exclave within the exclave.

Everyone got that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER151> You know what I shows a lot how trustworthy a Great Britain is. Begging (you know the period where De Gaulles had his veto ?) to get in the EU because their economy was not doing great and from the moment that there are some problems, instead of dealing with those problems getting out.

That being said as a European I couldn't care for the fifth "biggest" economy and I really hope that the EU keeps their 2 year timeline (if no deal can be reached in that timeframe it should be over) and deals on EU terms. They should not give a Switzerland or Norway deal without a hard bargain. My country and region is exposed a lot (jobs at our own country btw, trade,... ) and we where slowly recovering and now we are kicked down again. In the future we need to look for better and reliable business partners.

Also it's sickening to see how this give extreme right wing parties (and not right wing in the American sense, but really racist xenophobic parties) a boost. All old is new again, it is only 70 ago years we saw the same uprising of these kind of parties. I do hope that this doesn't jeopardize peace at the main land, that I fear the most. I can only imagine that a Putin is having the day of his life.

On a political sense I think in the end the EU can be possible better of, they never had a constructive attitude. With all the special statuses it got, it was already an island in Europe.

Btw seeing how the Euro is also falling, the whole idea of a weakened pound which have a positive impact regarding trade is also seriously backfiring. UK goods and services are still as expensive, maybe more after today.

</comment><comment><USER152> This correlates with XE.com currency converter website being down at the moment. Probably due to the pound value fluctuating...

<comment><USER153> Hah! I noticed the same thing. I woke up and immediately went to XE currency app on Android to check the rate of GBP, but the app is having issues and even crashed once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER154> This is a disaster. Something with such a huge impact on global society as a whole should have required a 2/3 majority.

<comment><USER155> Status quo is always good? Looks like there might be disasters waiting elsewhere.

For example, La Stampa: "A recent poll found that 48 per cent of Italians would leave the EU if given the chance to vote in their own referendum."

</comment></comment><comment><USER156> I have never felt less British than I do right now. :(

<comment><USER157> Can I ask why? The public spoke in completely free and democratic manner, against everything so called "experts" said. I thought this was a staple of being British?

<comment><USER158> Not the OP, but as someone born in Britain, raised in Switzerland and now living in the US, I concur.

At least in my case think of it as my identity being some mix of Europe-in- general, Britain-somewhat, Switzerland-somewhat. Now Britain says "we're not Europe" (to horribly over-simplify). That doesn't make me think "oh well, now I'm less European", instead it makes me thing "oh well, now I'm less British".

<comment><USER156> >That doesn't make me think "oh well, now I'm less European", instead it makes me thing "oh well, now I'm less British".

I was born here and I've lived in England my whole life, but that's exactly how I feel.

I've always identified as both British and European. Now that the UK has decided to isolate itself from Europe it hasn't made me feel less European it's made me feel less British.

<comment><USER159> Recent history has just outlined to me how massive the gulf is between my own politics and philosophies are to the rest of the country.

Britain is right-wing, xenophobic, corrupt and utterly in the service of financial elites who direct everyones attention toward Johnny Foreigner in order to hide their own self-serving agendas.

Plus we're well on the way to becoming a police state now that we face a future without the tempering hand of the EU on our thoroughly right-wing, demagogue politicians.

I need to start seriously considering moving somewhere else because I have very little patience for the path this country is on.

<comment><USER160> I diddnt down-vote you as I dont have that power, however generalisations about groups of people based on country of origin, race, gender, financial status, whatever is a large part of what caused this exit, if you read your post you are falling into that same trap.

My retired parents voted out not because they are right-wing or xenophobic (their son is a New Zealander now with an Asian Wife) but because they read right wing media (which they do not believe is right-wing) and believe the hype of the politicians and journalists. When they wake up tomorrow it is not going to magically be the UK of the 1960's they remember and the journalists and politicians will find someone else to blame.

Trump is doing the exact same in America and politicians from the right and left wing are doing it in other countries too. Generalisations are what gets politicians off, the fact generalisations also cause conflict is neither here nor there to them so long as they get power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER161> Ironically Brexit might bring a federal Europe closer to reality. It strengthens the dominance of France and Germany.

<comment><USER162> Yeah, Germany is going to come out a big winner out of this. And I'm glad, too. Germany seems a lot more democratic than UK lately. It deserves to be the #1 country in the EU.

<comment> maze-le I'd actually see this as a problem. Germany is already percieved as too powerful in the union. And in the fields, where they really have influence (e.g.: Eurogruppe) they screwed things up pretty much. Besides other nationalists already see German power as threat, the rise of the far right in France and Poland is by some degree influenced by this development.

I think the EU with less German influence would be better. (FYI I am german)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER163> As some people already said, even if the vote will be 'Leave' the Parliament most likely will not consider it and will not part ways with the EU siting some made-up problems, that "prohibit" the exit right away. Await another referendum until the necessary results are obtained.

<comment><USER164> Not so sure on this one: one thing that the UK is an example of is its respect for democracy. I hope the parliament accepts this non-binding vote, and take the necessary steps to swiftly break with the EU.

We in the EU can then proceed unhindered.

<comment><USER163> > Not so sure on this one: one thing that the UK is an example of is its > respect for democracy

Ha! Let's remind each other about this conversation in 3 months and review our arguments.

<comment><USER142> Looks like 3 months is too short. Cameron looks like he has no intention of getting the party started before his replacement is chosen, and that won't happen 'til October...

Ironically, it's the EU that seems impatient to get this over with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it should be said to clear things up that EU citizens in the UK are not going to be "chucked out". This is not going to happen and the major political figures have said as much on live broadcast today. Yes, it would be prudent to get indefinite leave to remain if you can or something more solid - whatever you can. But the UK needs you and even if a hardcore right wing lunatic tried to expel you it is completely impractical.

I also noticed some Irish people mentioning they would have to sell their house and leave - please for your sake, look up the official information on Irish/UK rules, you will find that they have freedom of movement regardless of the EU and in fact it goes much, much further than the EU rules.

Specifically: "Unlike other EU citizens, UK citizens may retire to Ireland without having to establish that they have sufficient resources or that they have private health insurance." [http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving_country/moving_t...](http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving_country/moving_to_ireland/rights_of_residence_in_ireland/residence_rules_UK_citizens.html)

"Irish citizens automatically have a right to reside in the UK as part of the common travel area. If you were habitually resident in Ireland or any of the other places in the common travel area before you came to the UK, you will automatically satisfy the conditions of the HRT." [https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/coming-from- abroa...](https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/coming-from-abroad-and- claiming-benefits-the-habitual-residence-test/british-and-irish-citizens- claiming-benefits/)

I think everybody needs to try and calm down. Even though a great many of us would have preferred not to leave, this can be OK.

The UK can easily end up in the EEA which has freedom of movement etc anyway.

This is not the time for panicked reactions!

</comment><comment><USER165> Since the discussion keeps circling back to effects and economics, I found this paper on "The Economic Impact of EU membership on the UK"[0] published by what looks like the House of Commons, which includes cost-benefit analyses of EU membership, effect of the EU on UK trade relations, impact of immigration from the EU, impact of EU regulation, Fiscal consequences of EU membership, etc.

Whilst it doesn't seem to cover every nuance of the situation, it adresses some of the points brought up for discussion in this thread, such as punitive tariffs (ruled out based on WTO non-discrimination rule), and seems like a fairly unbiased primer. It's fairly short too, 32 pages, written for a MP level of reading comprehension.

[0]researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06730/SN06730.pdf

</comment><comment><USER130> Really proud that my country chose democracy over a potential loss of money.

<comment><USER166> Nothing potential about it - your bank account is worth 10% less than it was yesterday.

<comment><USER167> ...and by the same logic, any mortgage is suddenly 10% smaller? Sounds like a good deal to the average citizen.

<comment><USER166> No, because your mortgage is still denominated in pounds. No change there.

But most goods are sold from other countries, so their prices just went up overnight. Of course, there are sticky prices but in general I would expect prices for imports to be higher in the near future with a weaker currency.

However, a weak currency does encourage exports, so it is true that the benefits/costs are complex. But in the past large currency devaluations have been harmful to the average citizen, and that is the consensus on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER168> Many US companies open a branch in London to enter the EU. It will be interesting to watch whether it does continue or if they choose another EU country.

<comment><USER60> This is the biggest risk, that every time a business wants to invest in Europe over the coming years London looks a little less attractive and Paris or Berlin a little more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER169> I'm hearing a lot of people comment that this will cause a huge macroeconomic deficit worldwide, and I'm going to briefly explain why I believe the Pound Sterling's 9% devaluation is purely speculative.

The UK simply didn't buy the EU's story about the Euro, and now they want a fully independent monetary policy. I'm not sure how much they have studied such possibility, but I bet that taking this to a democratic level was a data- driven decision.

The EU is going to want to put some political pressure for sure, but I don't think that they are going to want to do such a huge damage as wanting to establish a trade embargo with the 5th biggest economy of the world.

<comment><USER64> > now they want a fully independent monetary policy

In what way is it more independent now? It was independent before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER170> I consider this a good development.

Anytime a sovereign group of individuals declares independence from a larger group, which inevitably has different interests, it's a good thing.

I don't know why there's so much despair over this.

Yes, surely there are short-term negative effects, whether in the loss of EU privileges, or the temporary losses in currency values, but in the long-term, there's more independence and self-sufficiency.

A larger body of government isn't smarter; in fact, it is more detached from local concerns, and less able to react to them in a timely fashion.

We should celebrate the Brexit, just as we should celebrate any and all declarations of independence from larger bodies of governance.

</comment><comment><USER171> If this is followed by a Trump win in the US, it will mark the biggest change in mature men's hair style of recent times.

<comment><USER134> I dont even know where to store all the popcorn i will need in the next weeks and years. I am so excited that finally something happens again, especially as both things may lead to chaos and therefore real changes.

<comment><USER172> We've made pretty good progress in the past few decades without chaos - <USER4> don't see why you would think it's necessary for people to suffer in order to change things.

"Okay guys, just one last world war, then we'll _really_ make some progress"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER173> So apparently the majority can be convinced to do something silly; who would have thought that happening in a modern, civilized, western world, the connected world, the flat earth!

We underestimate the power of idiots in large numbers.

<comment><USER174> The Daily Mail has a lot of readers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER175> I never hear people bring up the undemocratic nature of the EU. Heck most Americans think the troika is a town in Greece

</comment><comment><USER176> Does anyone knows how this will affect tech recruitment?

<comment><USER101> I heard from Adobe that they will close their headquarter near London and move to their main operation to the Paris office. The UK branch essentially becomes a sales office, nothing more.

<comment><USER177> With any luck, Adobe will also leave millions of slow and bugridden PCs in Britain too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER178> Wow [https://twitter.com/JillFilipovic/status/746226435891724288](https://twitter.com/JillFilipovic/status/746226435891724288)

</comment><comment><USER179> I think this shows the dangers in ignoring those without power. For to long, people who were made worse off by integration with the EU were ignored, when they voiced concern about immigration were shouted down as racist, were mocked, were made to feel stupid and now this is the result.

I'm not saying that racism or xenophobia did not play a part, but when you brush everyone with concerns with that brush you push them towards extremism.

This is a sad day for the EU and for the UK. This is a bad outcome for each side. I'm not sure where we go from here.

<comment><USER142> _people who were made worse off by integration with the EU were ignored_

Correction: they were made worse off by their own government. The EU is an easy scapegoat, but the EU did not close down the mines or manufacturing plants.

<comment><USER179> ummm no.

I'm talking about the fact that unskilled wages have stagnated due to the influx migrants that was enabled by the EU.

Honestly it doesn't matter who is really to blame as the people who voted perceived that the EU was the cause. And in these circumstances perception trumps reality.

The lack empathy to understand where people are coming from and talking over the top to correct people is why this debate is so toxic, and why so many voted to leave. To win this debate the remain campaign needed to understand the drivers of brexit, to empathise with those wishing to leave and to show how that leaving wasn't the solution to their problems. Instead they browbeat people supporting brexit, by calling them racist, xenophobic, and stupid.

I wanted the UK to remain in the EU. I still do, I'm not sure where we go from here.

<comment><USER142> _in these circumstances perception trumps reality_

Yes, sad, isn't it? You can royally shaft part of your own citizens for forty years, decrease the tax burden on the richest people and largest businesses, and when push comes to shove, there is always an external enemy that you can blame.

We've been down this road before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER180> If Northern Ireland can't secede and join the Republic of Ireland, what will happen to that land border?

<comment><USER49> Probably nothing. Ireland isn't part of Schengen and has always had relatively open borders with the UK.

<comment><USER181> It's still an EU border so unless they accept the single market (free movement of people&goods) it does have to become a real border.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER182> The alt-right agenda gets their first win. It's not just crazy ideas that people will never validate.

<comment><USER150> There's nothing 'alt' about xenophobia over immigration. This is also the primary explanation for the rise of UKIP, the Front National, the Dansk Folkeparti, the AfD, Geert Wilders' PVV, and so on.

<comment><USER182> I should have placed quotes around "alt-right" as there's not much "alt" in "alt-right" either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> A beautiful day for the UK.

No longer will those with "wrong opinions" be shut out of debate and policy because they are conditioned with a pavlovian response of fear from being called bad names

</comment><comment><USER183> I wish people would stop opening pandoras box. This could get messy.

</comment><comment><USER52> ...and Cameron announces his resignation... nearly... will he...? and... yes. His position was untenable.

It goes from bad to worse. Leaving the EU and now we'll get Boris Johnson as well.

</comment><comment><USER184> This is good for the UK but bad for Europe, but y'all won't fully understand this move unless you edge into conspiracy theory territory. Allow me to take you there for a moment.

The supranational oligarchy is mostly concentrated in a few key places in the world, Wall Street, City of London, Vatican City, DC, Switzerland, etc. The supranational oligarchy the most in control though according to my estimations is City of London. I analyze from an American perspective and Wall Street and DC seem to have rolled over for them on most occasions.

That being said, the true goal of the oligarchy is a collectivist global government model. The problem is the collectivist model hurts the countries that join it while propping up their oligarchy.

I predicted months ago UK would leave because they are the ones who pushed the EU onto the Europeans in the first place, (keeping the pound was a dead giveaway), and now I simply think they are aiming to maintain local order and prosperity at a higher level than Europe so as to keep their people placated somewhat.

Next up, massive restrictions on Immigration in the UK.

Recommended reader for background, anything by Carroll Quigley.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is modifying the free movement of people provision a workable compromise? The Swiss recently also voted to limit EU immigration. Sweden, Denmark, and France recently had temporary border controls to deal with refugees. Maybe there should be stronger adjustment mechanisms so people aren't 100% free to move en masse for now, yet still have the long term goal of achieving the freedom of movement ideal.

<comment><USER41> You're throwing unrelated things together.

\- The Swiss move is one-sided, it's not yet implemented. There's a good chance their EU treaties get cancelled when they implement it. \- The border controls some countries implemented are a suspension of certain Schenfen rules. They do not affect the free movement of people within the EU. Also these Schengen rules have never applied to the UK.

<comment><USER38> They're related by fear. Fear of being swamped by immigrants. Fear of terrorists. Fear of losing their country's identity. The UK, like Switzerland, adopted freedom of movement provisions to access the common market despite the UK not being in Schengen. The Swiss suspended negotiations on their new controls specifically to see the outcome of the UK referendum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER185> As someone who doesn't want this neo-liberist, anti-democratic EU I see this as a very good news. Let's hope Denmark and France to follow.

<comment><USER186> Well, Britain is largely responsible for making the EU neo-liberalist...

<comment><USER60> and will probably shift further that way itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER187> The map here [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results) is pretty frightening for the UK - Scotland will demand another independence referendum. This time they will win and it's the end of the United Kingdom.

</comment><comment><USER188> What's most interesting about this thread to me is that before the vote the general consensus was "nobody knows what's better anymore anyway, hence also the close call". Now that the decision has been made to leave, most agree it was a big mistake and predict all sorts of bad consequences. What changed?

<comment><USER189> People have seen the market responding to uncertainty by dumping GBP and FTSE and are equating that with the UK economy actually being much worse off already. Hence the sudden 'realisation' that brexit was a terrible decision. Large numbers of traders betting on the UK betting on the UK being worse off does not make it so. (Or I guess it kind of does.. but that's markets for you!)

At this point we have absolutely no information about what the Brexit deal will look like, it's impossible to know what the UK economy will be like post EU. For all we know the eurozone could face a crisis in the next few years and by distancing itself from Brussels the UK could end up better off.

In a month or two when things have settled down we'll see a much more reasoned debate. Once article 50 is invoked and we begin to see what the 'leave' deal will actually look like you may see many people adjusting their position.

<comment><USER188> > People have seen the market responding to uncertainty by dumping GBP and > FTSE and are equating that with the UK economy actually being much worse off > already. Hence the sudden 'realisation' that brexit was a terrible decision.

So uncertainty translated into markets diving, which translated into believing it was a bad idea because markets are diving. Interesting analysis that makes quite a bit of sense.

<comment><USER142> Yes, welcome to economics 101: The only science where the public can make things true by believing in them :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER190> Better a divorce now than later. They've been wanting to leave since the 80's. Everyone will be better off.

</comment><comment><USER191> This is why we can't have nice things.

</comment><comment><USER192> Tried to warn HN yesterday about this, it reached the front page in seconds then was flagkilled despite being massively relevant to British tech startups: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952724](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952724)

</comment><comment><USER193> What's stopping Britons from having another referendum?

<comment><USER164> It is not legally binding, so nothing. But who would take responsibility of organizing that, disregarding the opinion of the majority of the British people? And what do you suggest, having a non-binding referendum until Remain wins?

Out is out.

<comment><USER149> It's not really a majority though. If I polled 100 people and said to you the majority said leave, how many would you estimate that is? 75-90 perhaps?

This result seems to be 52/48 so it's incredible that such a monumentally important decision is to be made from this interpretation of a majority.

<comment><USER164> That's just how referendums work: better to have 48% of unhappy people than 52% of unhappy people. You will never have 100% agreement anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER194> I think it is a great day for the power of direct democracy, individual impact, and subsequent accountability for ones voting decisions.

The old England introduced to the world of kings & dictators, the Habeas Corpus and Magna Carta.

Now, the UK of 2016 had shown that the voters -- can take the decision power back.

The so called 'representative democracy' is no longer representative, it is, instead -- a 'Placebo' democracy. Where the voters are mislead to think that their opinion matters.

And it is the 'leavers' people of UK, the voters who are described on this forum as the 'old and un-educated' \-- are the first in Europe, to recognize that they were sold a Placebo-democracy.

The vote to leave is the first chapter in the modern's world Magna Carta.

And I congratulate the people of UK.

</comment><comment><USER195> This vote achieves two objectives. The first is to clarify the position of UK in Europe that has always been ambiguous. The second is to weaken the leadership of Germany showing clearly that they are leading in the wrong direction.In the end I believe that the long term conseguences will be beneficial for the rest of Europe.But UK has to pay the conseguences of their choices. I was already strongly skeptical, after the LIBOR scandal, about having London as the main stock exchange in Europe. After this vote I am completely against it: I want the main European stock exchange to BE IN EUROPE. Frankfurt or Paris are the most natural candidates.

</comment><comment><USER196> This discussion on Hackernews should have happened before the exit and not after, 2100+ comments so far, it goes to say that we all have strong opinions on the matter that might have swayed some of us that can vote in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER197> This decision is going to have major effects on markets over the next few days.

</comment><comment><USER198> So now that the transatlanticists (Hilary is one) have lost their EU insider, I suspect Poland will take its place. Given that Poland is a geopolitically strategic country, given Russian aggression, and given that German and Russia are "talking again", it seems that Brexit will prove fruitful for Poland in the long run...if both countries play their cards right. Impeding Polish immigration to Britain can also force a turn of events in Poland that prevent the gov't from relying on immigration to deal with unemployment through long overdue reforms.

</comment><comment><USER199> It is sad that Britain leaves the EU. Britain is one of EUs founding countries. One can wonder how this on the long term affects peace in Europe if there are external challenges like a country being invaded.

A good thing I can see is that British offshore banking will not be allowed to siphon off European tax payers money. In my country there is things like pharmacies where medicines are payed by the wellfare state that is owned in British tax havens. Right now that is the only positive effect I can see that may end.

In light Norway and Switzerland are also doing ok as countries.

<comment><USER13> It wasn't one of EU's founding countries. Those were France, (West) Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER200> As a modernist I loathe the Brits for this vote against the European project. As a libertarian I applaud them for their courage! As a stock holder I need a drink.

I try to make up my mind, which Union will be more affected by the Brexit: The European Union or the British?

Both institutions deserve some "house-cleaning" but after the Leave-Win it is sort of "either-or": A vote for "Union A" becomes a vote against "Union B" and vice-versa.

</comment><comment><USER173> That was quite unexpected. Till very late before polling, most people were in favor of staying in the EU. Nationalism takes over logic in Europe again.

</comment><comment><USER201> There will be massive trade barriers put up by the EU/Germany - this could spell the end of the entire European project - look at how hard Greece got screwed to make sure other countries like Spain and Italy didn't think about leaving the Euro. That German cars will cost more in the UK (like everything else) really won't affect Germany as much as the end of Europe.

And now Cameron resigns - I'm shocked.

</comment><comment><USER202> I wonder what the conspiracy theorists who believe in the New World Order conspiracy think about this.

Seems like a blow to that theory from where I'm standing.

</comment><comment><USER203> "For the agreement to enter into force it needs to be approved by at least 72 percent of the continuing member states" [0].

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_withdrawal_from...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_withdrawal_from_the_European_Union#Procedure_for_leaving_the_EU)

</comment><comment><USER64> Note to self:

\- Learn german

\- Invest in german language schools

</comment><comment><USER204> My question as an ignorant American is does this mean other countries might also leave and how many can leave before it collapses?

<comment><USER64> There are no announced plans for referenda anywhere else. I guess most of europe is standing waiting to see how this pans out. Despite common disgruntlement with EU, it seems most countries prefer to be in it. EU is capturing a lot of bashing because of other reasons, i believe. It is used sometimes as a scapegoat by populists.

For example look at this:

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1740f3a6-2cc2-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1740f3a6-2cc2-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519fc.html#axzz4CUiICIcC)

It appears EU is immensely unfavourable in greece, yet people again and again vote government to stay not only in the EU, but in the eurozone as well.

That said, I would wager there is a lot of cognitive dissonance and disillusionment at this time across both ponds of the atlantic. These are unpredictable times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER205> "Put 11 fools on one side, 10 philosophers on the other side ... fools prevail. That's democracy " Jacques Brel

</comment><comment><USER206> Good developers must learn to ignore this sort of news & get back to work. That's what I'm going to do!

<comment><USER207> You can ignore politics all you want, but politics won't ignore you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER208> Really happy to see this. Of course this is about immigration. Moderates on all sides of politics in all countries have long asserted that it is important that Israel remain a "Jewish and democratic state". Now some right wing extremists have taken this same logic and applied to other countries :-)

</comment><comment><USER209> U.S. market futures are taking a nice dump.

</comment><comment><USER210> This was a very close vote. It should have gone to Remain. But the culprit was the chancellor, who threatened people with a punishment budget. The English do not like to be blackmailed. I think this was very much a "F-U" vote. It is a classic example of a stupid mistake by a single politician.

</comment><comment><USER211> Will Scotland break away from UK? [http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21701332-brexit-has- sp...](http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21701332-brexit-has-sparked- calls-another-independence-referendum-also-made-it-trickier)

</comment><comment><USER212> Take the US federal government, take away 2/3 of Congress's powers, give all of those powers to the civil service, and then replace the President with a committee appointed by state governments on a staggered basis. That's the EU.

Congratulations Britain, today you took back control of your own destiny.

<comment><USER213> I'm sorry for your loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER214> Guess I'll have to move my Git hosting elsewhere then. That's too bad, I was quite fond of Codebase.

<comment><USER141> Why does this mean you can't host your code there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER215> London Stays. [http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-latest-london- ind...](http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-latest-london-independence- time-to-leave-uk-eu-referendum-sadiq-khan-boris-johnson-a7100601.html)

</comment><comment><USER216> Murdochracy at work...

</comment><comment><USER217> Britons today recover from a political bombshell, a vague distant aspect etched on the faces of Remainers and some Brexiteers alike, never quite fading as they proceed through the polite machinations of a just another Friday. Today there was no fire, nor planes charting a new course as they veer around the vertical borders of the common market, yet to the observer one thing is clear - something has changed, and this thing may not be undone.

As the enormity of the situation sets in, Britain must reflect on her status. Yet as currency and foreign investment alike tick into the ether, we cannot afford leisurely introspection. Commentators alight to social media, fast food opinions winding through the networks to be forwarded, appraised, accosted, and forgotten.

A stunned middle rouse from their silence, incredulity reigning. Someone must be blamed, and there are no shortage of targets. The deceitful far right must surely be deposed, their 350 million untruths a week publicly unravelled at the teeth of the media. Tautological slogans, much as we must surely want to "Make Britain British again" wear thin, amid claims of xenophobia being noncommittally dismissed, and swiftly, lest anyone ponder too long at their origin.

The leave campaign celebrate an ethereal success, yet no definition of success appears. Nor was one provided - a marginal result in a referendum which declined to assert a majority, or to be legislatively bound to parliamentary action, leaves dangerous room for interpretation, yet as a consequence manages to leave none at all.

The glaring omission makes one thing clear - there is no plan - for who can plan for what cannot be defined? The stage show props of austerity budgets are shuffled back under coats amid sheepish mutterings of "ah, well, before the vote, you see…". The idea of success of this referendum was to do not with the outcome, but with its existence. A scrap, thrown far to the right in exchange for a grubby four years, has swiftly been devoured, and the leader finds his four years have, overnight, been devalued to two.

Exposed to his short sell on the exchange rate of democracy to political capital, he has built an unflattering legacy. The leader who failed to lead, and the alumnus who handed the keys to the counterfeit every-men riding a wave of anti-intellectualism, has gambled one time too many and must bear the greatest loss of his era. Not only has the sea between Britain and the world become rougher than ever, but the political dice are cast, and as they tumble to a halt, the shape of the United Kingdom itself now rests on how they lie.

</comment><comment><USER218> Congratulations to British people for their courage and determination. It amazing how much primitivism and hate on a forum of the self called "elite" and the "intellectuals" who cannot stand that someone could think differently about their grandiose ideas.

</comment><comment><USER219> The EU is nowehere near what its declaration stated. aka there are fundamental problems in this union which the EU is trying to hide under the carpet but they can not be hidden.

What I find surprising is that it is the British who first decide to act about them instead of the southerns.

</comment><comment><USER220> For everything there is a season. Globalism had a great reputation at the turn of the millennium. Then we had Iraq, the Great Financial Crisis and Syria, which damaged the credibility of the leadership class. So now status quo in the west cannot be taken for granted.

</comment><comment><USER221> I wonder how much bank the funds that shorted the pound are making. Some conducted their own polls

</comment><comment><USER222> Hate to use a poker analogy but: Cameron forgot the cardinal rule of gambling. Always leave yourself 'outs'. He raised the stakes when he had little to gain (shut up some dissidents in his party?) and everything to lose. No one forced him to do that.

</comment><comment><USER223> This might be somewhat related and certainly is not encouraging in the current context, unfortunately.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11876453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11876453)

</comment><comment><USER224> Well hey, so much for interest rates rising anytime soon. Probably good for tech funding, but bad for many other things.

But that's the only kind of shamelessly self-interested sort of kind of silver lining I can think of. This is pretty bad IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER225> time to plan my cheap vacation from US to London

</comment><comment><USER226> "The EU will be an easier-to-trade bloc of countries that will facilitate trade.

THAT WAS THE _CLAIM_.

Ask any English-born tradesperson trying to find work in England that pays anything.

The reality is the EU morphed into a Leftist prank to have open borders and CENTRAL GOVERNMENT (in Brussels, Belgium).

The Left says "let anyone into the country who wants to come."

Yet me and my software engineer peers are constantly undermined by the very same thing -- elitists attempts to undermine our wages by flooding the tech worker ranks with as many foreign workers as our worthless U.S. Congress will allow.

No freaking thank you.

When my friends bring up 'the U.S. must eliminate our national borders' and I bring up the fact that our jobs have been undercut, our salaries marginalized, by that very same thing -- over-supply of labor -- it makes them stop and think of this 'no more borders' differently.

</comment><comment><USER227> What does mean for the US economy in terms of exports to the UK and larger EU countries? The pound drops sharply (~15%). The Euro down to $1.08. Does this mean that a stronger dollar will negatively impact US exports?

<comment><USER174> It means that we are going the hear to phrase "strong currency headwinds" in all earnings conference calls for the foreseeable future.

And overseas sales will probably go down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER211> EU is only good for export-oriented countries; Imagine CHINDIA as a EU member :)

</comment><comment><USER211> UK joined the EU only so it can break it from the inside :) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE)

</comment><comment><USER228> Japan is also being bludgeoned here with safe haven flows to the yen. Up 15% against sterling in a matter of hours. Up 5% against another safe haven, the USD... And they have negative interest rates... wow.

</comment><comment><USER229> Time to buy Bitcoin and gold

</comment><comment><USER230> They have many good reasons to leave the EU. And very few reasons to stay.

</comment><comment><USER231> Is there really an UK left if North Ireland and Scotland deciede to leave?

<comment><USER174> Yes, it would England and Wales. (Not that I'm fond of that prospect.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER232> So as this vote is non binding, the UK lawmakers would be responsible for repealing the EU membership. But since Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay, could the Scottish MPs block the actual exit?

<comment><USER233> I believe it is possible in theory. Parliament now have to agree on how to action the divorce. If all the pro-EU PMs cross-party vote against the proposals then it could be held up. But who is willing to put their job/reputation on the line apart from maybe the SNP members?

In any case this will not be done in two years which is the max time allowed by the EU treaty after the UK gov makes it official.

Trade negotiations much more simple than this between the EU and other countries usually take 4-5 years or more. I will be surprised if the UK is out completely within 5 years.

During that time the UK is still subject to all the terms of EU membership.

Plus there are re-negotiations with all the other countries the UK had access to via the existing EU trade agreements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER234> The historians of the future will point at Greece for playing a major role in brexit and any subsequent demise of Europe with gaming the financial system and f __*ng up the immigration issue.

<comment><USER64> I agree on the immigration issue, but i don't see the major role on brexit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> Really happy for the UK. Hope they can figure out a way to make this work without the EU trying to make a example out of them why you should never quit the EU.

</comment><comment><USER84> so uh, slightly random question, if i import things from great britain to the EU, do I have to pay import taxes now, or is there a "grace period"?

<comment><USER235> There is a grace period, especially since the UK hasn't even started the formal process of leaving, yet. Parliament will also need to decide on this.

There is only one scenario without a grace period: some more radical Brexit supporters advocate breaking EU laws and regulations immediately (right to work and live and so on), just because the European courts take their time and by the time they'd hear the case the UK would already have left, so no consequences.

In that case some European politicians have replied there will be an immediate cutoff from the Common Market.

Both threats are highly unlikely to be played out, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER236> And the 100 year cycle is in full effect. Sad times ...

</comment><comment><USER237> Why did they let the people decide in a direct referendum in the first place? That seems like a terrible idea for such a complex matter.

</comment><comment><USER238> People keep saying 'unelected bureaucracy', but this is a meme spread by the tabloid media. There is the council of ministers which is made up of representatives appointed by each country's democratically elected government. The council directs EU civil servants to draw up legislation. Every one of these representatives to the council has a veto over legislation that is proposed by it and control over how they are represented in the EU bureaucracy. There is then the EU parliament which is elected under a proportional representation system and has the ability to veto and propose amendments to decisions made by the council of ministers. Finally, EU directives are not 'laws' they are more like overarching goals that each country then passes into local laws to implement in detail, which is a further opportunity to kick back unwelcome legislation to the EU. Further, the EU employs civil servants at a ratio of civil servants to citizens of ~1/10000, compared to the UK ratio which is ~1/150\. So it's not even particularly bureaucratic. If the council of ministers is making unpopular decisions it is because of a failure of democratically elected national governments to brief their representatives properly and engage with the process.

But the fact is that plenty of people don't have a clue how the EU works. On the streets of Britain, public services have been run down by underinvestment, house prices are out of control due a reluctance to reign in property speculation and good blue collar jobs with decent pensions are being lost to globalisation, automation and 'Uberisation' of the labour market. So a bunch of older poorer people in villages and small towns across _England and Wales_ (not Scotland), read in the right wing tabloids that immigrants are to blame, they take this at face value and fall for it hook line and sinker and will ironically end up with an even more right wing government that no-one has voted for under Boris Johnson. What's more, it was clear that the vote was entirely down to fear of immigration not actual experience of immigration as the brexit vote was strongest in areas with the _least_ immigrants. Places where people have never met a brown person voted most strongly for out based purely on fear stoked by tabloids peddling a racist agenda. Indeed some of UKIP's campaign posters were almost facsimiles of 1930's NAZI imagery.

There is a real democratic deficit in our system though. This referendum was proposed by the prime minister as part of a tactical gamble to control the right wing of his political party. This is a government which was only voted for by 1/3 of the electorate, and scraped through with a tiny majority of 6 MPs. The real wasteful bureaucracy with a strong dose of unelected elites is the UK parliament with the unelected House of Lords and the inefficient Houses of Parliament which is effectively a 'bistable' two party system due to the first past the post voting system. They waste unbelievable amounts of money changing things the previous government set up just in time for it all to be undone when they are voted out 10 years later. Political discourse amongst the populace seems like it is mostly dead in small town England and Wales, but it is striking to note however that political discourse is definitely not dead in Scotland and you can see the results as all of Scotland voted to remain. As an Englishman living in Scotland, and I speak for a lot of other English people I know up here too, I will definitely be voting to leave the UK and stay in the EU if the chance arises. There is plenty that is wrong with the EU, I think the council of ministers should be replaced, but it is at least as democratic as the UK parliament is now and more importantly it is a forward looking institution which is much more likely to evolve into something better than the UK parliament, especially after a vote like this.

</comment><comment><USER239> If the prime minister is resigning, it seems the vote is irreversible? Does anyone know how the UK plans to grow back strong?

</comment><comment><USER240> A slightly meta discussion:

I noticed that some "typical headline news" are gathering a lot of votes and getting to the top of front page. This seems to be working against the HN guidelines:

 _If they 'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic._

I know political news get some kind of penalties. Would that apply to a more generic headline news like this?

Personally, I upvote stories like this purely because of its significance. And I am not sure if that was the intended use case.

<comment><USER241> This isn't some run-of-the-mill political news story. This is world history in the making. Surely, if any case deserves an exception to the general rule, it's this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER242> "need to install flash player" everywhere, what a shame. This is _the_ BBC - really annoying.

</comment><comment><USER243> Is now a good time to invest in British currency? Are there some good resources for how to do that?

<comment><USER167> > Is now a good time to invest in British currency? Are there some good > resources for how to do that?

I can't imagine that it would be a good idea for you to invest in anything when you have to rely on the judgment of internet strangers if it's a "good time" to do so.

If you disagree, I have a really fine bridge to sell you in London.

</comment></comment><comment><USER244> A disaster. The implications for the EU project, and for global stability, are grave.

</comment><comment><USER245> When I read this I imagine the type of 'leave' voters : old grannies and grandpa's who lived all their lives in a rat hole and doing their backyard. 75% of the youth voted stay. This just shows the huge gap of information that the youth has and the same not used information by the old generations

</comment><comment><USER246> Victory for self-determination.

</comment><comment><USER247> Too soon to calculate the damage on the markets and how long until recovery?

</comment><comment><USER248> I find it odd a United Kingdom doesn't want to be in a united Europe.

</comment><comment><USER249> It's official - the UK has voted to leave the European Union.

</comment><comment><USER250> Man, this thread is unreadable without comment-collapse.

</comment><comment><USER211> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority) should live in separate country

</comment><comment><USER251> Is this the beginning of the next great recession?

</comment><comment><USER206> Hmm... What happens to the union with Ireland then?

Will it still be possible to travel from Ireland to the UK without showing documents?

If not... then will there be a new fence across Ireland (between north and south)?

<comment><USER252> Ireland and England have something called the Common Travel Area ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area)) which is unrelated to the EU. Basically shouldn't be affected really. Only destabilizing thing that comes to mind would be the Scotland + N. Ireland leaving the UK might make them rethink this.

<comment><USER206> You are right.. I was thinking EU relating to visa requirements, but that is Schengen in much of the EU, including Ireland.

It seems there will be no change in regard to visas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER253> Young people in the UK got really really screwed.

<comment> UVB-76 Young people in the UK were already screwed.

Leaving the EU will open up a whole range of challenges and opportunities, some of which may see young people ending up slightly less screwed.

<comment><USER174> If you are referring to housing, the main problem was that there was not enough housing being built (last year ~140 000 houses got built, in 1971 ~400 000 got built), not that there were too many people.

<comment><USER254> Yes, it's a supply side problem. The housing stock is virtually fixed.

Being a member of the EU undoubtedly pushes demand up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER255> America did this before it was mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER256> It's time to buy Alfred powerpack :P

</comment><comment><USER173> I wonder the role of the US in this.

</comment><comment><USER51> Really shows how good of a "union" they left with all the scaremongering going on.

</comment><comment><USER257> 2016'th comment.

</comment><comment><USER258> Does it affect asia ?

</comment><comment><USER259> Sad day. Shocked.

</comment><comment><USER56> And a special thank you from Canada. This vote is going to give Quebec ideas again.

<comment><USER63> I don't expect the UK to come out better off from this.

This may actually work really well for the opponents of separatist movements in developed nations.

<comment><USER56> Oh, Quebec won't ever leave. Even those who want to "leave" don't really mean leave. They always expected to keep Canadian money and passports. But we will have to live though a year of pathetic 'will they/won't they' news stories along with another round of French language laws and other things only the gray-haired care about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER260> 2k+ comments wow!

</comment><comment><USER261> That's a very strange, and in some cases inaccurate, portrayal of history.

* The British were not an external enemy. That would have been the French. For the most part, even the people leading the revolution were proud of being British subjects and would have liked to remain so, but could no longer tolerate the conditions being attached to that status. Our enemy was recognized to be our own cousins, not some external force.

* The shared dream of settling the continent was real but - given that said continent was already occupied and settling it meant exterminating the current residents - it's not something I'd want to put forward as key to our identity.

* Shared culture, language, religion? Language, mostly. The Puritans in New England didn't really have much to say to the Quakers in Philadelphia, and both had even less in common with the not-particularly-religious folks down in Virginia. Yes, I guess they all were (or at least professed to be) Christians, but that's not _too_ different than Europe today.

So, basically, the difference between the US and the EU, according to the criteria you've mentioned, is that the US united to commit genocide and the EU united to avoid it. Congratulations on making the point that the two cases are different.

<comment><USER262> >The British were not an external enemy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party)

>The shared dream of settling the continent was real but - given that said continent was already occupied

I doubt you understand how large the US is if you think that. Most of it was empty. The union was already strongly formed before the genocide of the west got under way.

>Shared culture, language, religion? Language, mostly.

I think you might underestimate how much a single shared language helps mobility, doing business, spreading culture, etc. The fact that the EU embraces individual country identities will mean it will never be as cohesive as the US. If every state in the US spoke a different language, the US probably wouldn't have even made it past the size of the original colonies.

<comment><USER263> > I doubt you understand how large the US is if you think > that. Most of it > was empty. The union was already strongly > formed before the genocide of > the west got under way.

According to the book 1491 (which is a great read, highly recommended), the population of the New World was much larger, and more more historic than we may be lead to imagine. Millions of Native Americans lived on the east coast alone. What may have did them in was disease (smallpox, etc) that desecrated the people before even the pilgrims came on the scene. What the first colonist may have seen was just all that was left of a epidemic.

(I also agree a genocide also happened in the West, from what survivors there were)

<comment><USER264> Here is another good reference on the early stages of the colonisation of the Americas. I'd highly recommend it (Taylor's American Colonies) [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002DBIO2U/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002DBIO2U/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER265> > What culture do Germans, Greeks, Latvians, Bulgarians, Fins, and Spaniards > share?

The one that used to be called the Roman Empire, then Christendom, and is now called Western Civilisation. It is also arguably the greatest achievement of the human species.

<comment><USER266> > _It is also arguably the greatest achievement of the human species._

This belief, and a horrid past (and present) of exploiting, plundering, murdering, etc all over the world, from the Crusades and colonial times to the Holocaust and onwards, is what makes it one of the most bloody and backwards "achievements of the human species".

Some exhibits from the "greatest achievement of the human species":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Congo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Congo)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961)

<comment><USER267> You can make a laundry list equally as terrible for any civilization that has ever existed. Atrocities are not limited to one particular culture, they are a shared human failing. I would argue that the character of a culture is not set by its lowest points but by how it claws its way back towards the light of liberté, égalité, fraternité.

<comment><USER266> > _You can make a laundry list equally as terrible for any civilization that > has ever existed._

A lot of civilizations at worse were at war with some other. This list is like a cancer spreading over the whole planet -- including some of its "achievements" that can wipe out the whole planet literally, like nukes.

The Holocaust, for example, doesn't leave much to trivialize. Plus at least those other civilizations had a lot of excuses (ignorance etc). Most of those things in the list have done in the era of "lights" and "science" with no excuse but pure greed.

> _I would argue that the character of a culture is not set by its lowest > points but by how it claws its way back towards the light of liberté, > égalité, fraternité_

I would argue that liberté, égalité, fraternité is just a way of seeing the world of a particular culture, not the be all end all of morality and civilization.

Plus it has been a hypocritical slogan for centuries, one used to beat other peoples to make them "civilized" or "bring democracy" (the white man's burden), when underneath it was profits and greed doing the work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER268> > In my opinion, the chances of any sort of war at this point remain pretty > low.

I would have said the same thing 4 or 5 years ago, but in the meantime we did in fact have a war in Europe, I'm talking about the war in Eastern Ukraine (which is still part of Europe). But you're sort of right, who can think of something like that spreading to the Western side of the continent?

Until last night I would would have answered: "no sane person", but after I saw the idiot Nigel Farage speak on the BBC (I don't actually follow UK politics, this was my first time hearing him actually speak) I had quite the internal shock. To hear a (what has now become) mainstream politician talk so vividly against immigration and against "multinationals" in 2016 was... don't know how to put it, harrowing. You're probably from the States where you people treat Trump like the idiot that he is and think that even if gets elected things will move on as usual, but us in this part of the world have had the privilege of slaughtering ourselves in the trenches of the Ardennes or in the steppes of Western Russia because of people like Farage in the past.

<comment><USER146> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966692](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966692) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER268> Sorry to hear that, as I've been on this website for 8 years now, I think, and have never commented about politics in here until this topic came up. But is disingenuous to mark this as "off-topic" as the anti-immigration discourse has been center stage in the "Leave" campaign, and as this topic is about the UK actually leaving the UK I fail to see how this was marked as "off topic".

This is just about decent people hiding their heads in the sand hoping that the problem would go away. It won't. I'm on Sam Altman's side on this ([http://blog.samaltman.com/trump](http://blog.samaltman.com/trump)), even though he's talking about a different political idiot the idea is the same.

<comment><USER146> It wasn't just your comment but the ridiculous response it gave rise to. I marked the entire subthread off topic because it seemed to me the two were connected, even though I don't you intended a flamewar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER269> I wish to point out an important but not-directly-economical angle to Brexit that has seemed to play an important role.

I wish the liberals take a notice of the problem of immigration, mainly the immigration of from Islamic countries. I am a liberal at the core. But what I have found that when it comes to Islam, many mainstream liberals and liberal politicians follow a double standard. The legitimate criticism of Islam, Quran and its prophet are shunned by many mainstream liberals by labeling it as racist attacks, Islamophobia, far-right and what not. I call such people phoney liberals.

The phoney liberals take a stance that the Britons/Europeans should bend over backwards to accommodate Muslims along with their medieval, backward Islamic way of life in order for the integration. They never tell Muslims in clear words that "Look, we have a policy of separation of church and state, in your case it means separation of mosque and state. You should accept, if you want to live here, that we value freedom of speech and that includes freedom to offend you too by criticizing Islam or by making fun of your religion, your prophet, your scriptures and your religious practices." But what did the phoney liberals do after Charlie Hebdo episode? They criticized the tabloid for being offending to Muslims.

A liberal thinker Bill Maher has put this in a very good manner [1],[2],[3],[4]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntv3a80RGiw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntv3a80RGiw)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL8rZTuGfZo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL8rZTuGfZo)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75Zfgj2k0KM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75Zfgj2k0KM)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipu0ifyC- Xc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipu0ifyC-Xc)

<comment><USER269> Here is a relevant point raised by Sam Harris.

Sam Harris : Liberals failure to talk honestly about Islam is responsible for the rise of Trump [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M)

</comment></comment><comment><USER270> On the contrary, historical perspective is essential in understanding the issues that the EU is going through currently. If the German leadership took a good look in the mirror, it would see that it is subjecting Greece to a replica of the Treaty of Versaille and, as a result, should expect similar consequences. The PR outfall of that debacle is probably what pushed the Brits to vote for exit.

<comment><USER271> Their is a lot wrong with what you say. Clearly you are not up with current historical studies on the 'Treaty of Versaille'. The treaty was actually not particularly hard or in any way impossible to mean by Germany. If Germany had better leadership they could easily have moved passed it and be the most wealthy nation again.

What they are doing to Greece is actually much worse then Versaille. It has to do with the issue that Greece should have defaulted years (I was arguing this even in 2008) and change their government. Because of EU (EMU) logic this can not happen. So Greece is forced to change its government in the context of huge debt and even worse a flat demand curve (look at EU NGDP and Greece NGDP). Greece is about the only country that actually did significant Austerity but its not working. The EU should have let them default or take over their debt completely.

You are probably right that PR is the main issue. It was with 'Versaille' as well. German government PR is the main reason why you use 'Versaille' as an example of evil practice. Maybe the most successful example of PR in the last 100 years.

<comment><USER272> Greece did not do meaningful Austerity, they let their debt continue to snowball and continued to spend more than they where taxing.

[http://www.statista.com/statistics/275335/government- revenue...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/275335/government-revenue-and- spending-in-greece/)

<comment><USER273> Isn't that exactly what Keynesian economics would predict if a country launched "meaningful" austerity?

Without external input, decreased spending would decrease demand, which would decrease output, which would reduce the expected revenue:spending increases from the initial spending cuts, which would require further spending cuts to hit ratio targets, etc etc.

<comment><USER271> It depends. Yes economics (both New Keynesians and Monetarist) would predict this but not for the reason you stated. The input does not have to be external, you just need a central bank to keep up demand (think NGDP). If you are in a system where you can not do that (as in the case of Greece) then you have a major problem.

The Keynesians believe that you can increase demand by government spending but that was not an option for Greece anyway. The EU would have to pay for it but its hard to do that and do fiscal reforms at the same time.

The only solution you have left is really harsh reforms, and most importantly wage cuts. A flexible labor system is the best defence against extend recession. Check out some of the Baltic states, they took pretty harsh wage cuts. They were lucky that they did not yet have such large governments and debt that this could be done and they did not have to face default at the same time.

Greece was institutionally not capable of these things, and their situation was bad to begin with.

The should have defaulted and set up a tmp government in 2008 that could do sweeping reforms. Had they had a high change of being more or less stable right now. But the EU is against that and Greece was faced with the impossible task of both do structural reforms, debt payback and terrible monetary policy from the ECB. Its an economic shit show of epic proportions.

<comment><USER273> I imagine a temporary government was completely off the table for political reasons, as advantageous as it might have been. "The EU reserves the right to replace your democratically elected government at will" would be a pretty frightening message to send.

<comment><USER271> I would hope that with a default that could be an internal choice, and they might have asked the EU for help and support.

I certainly don't want the EU to put a government there.

Even if that was not possible, a default would have been good. Normal election would also cause some changes after such a period.

What the EU is doing is just terrible. Not letting them default and making all lending depend on the countries complaints with the EU.

<comment><USER272> They did default even if nobody calls it a default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER274> In my opinion, the chances of any sort of war at this point remain pretty low.

However, it's possible a Trump presidency and fractured EU might lead to a perfect storm for some kind of global conflict in a few years. I think still a low chance, but it does almost sound like the beginning chapter of a history book.

<comment><USER275> _In my opinion, the chances of any sort of war at this point remain pretty low._

You're right, there's little chance of a war between any of the EU (or soon to be former EU) countries. And, more importantly, there's no foreseeable reason for there to be a war.

But, not to put too fine a point on it, there also _can 't_ be a war for one other reason: Nobody but Putin has much in the way of armed forces. Things could get really ugly if Putin decided to, e.g. invade the Baltics.

I did some quick checking. Here's an example: Germany's current unified armed forces, the Bundeswehr, have 178,000 active soldiers.[1] In WW II, Germany's army (just the army) had 12,000,000 active soldiers in 1944.[2]

For today's EU, war would be more of a dalliance than serious business. And that's a good thing.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Army_(Wehrmacht)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Army_\(Wehrmacht\))

<comment> mh-cx What makes you so sure? Populism is on the rise. With decisions like this they just gain even more power, see Peer Wilders etc. And naive people believe in simple solutions to complex problems. They are easy to fool. Our situation now is not so far from 1910 where many intellectuals would never have thought that a war among civilised nations would have been possible.

Honestly - I'm afraid of this development.

<comment><USER276> Same. It can start with something small and get out of control fast. Especially with our destabilized Middle East, tension in the South China Sea, Russian aggression in Europe and the Arctic, and growing nationalism and anti immigrant sentiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER277> At the end of the day, the EU _as it is_ is something that was shoved onto the people of Europe by big business, bureaucrats, Eurocrats etc. Working people feel all the negative impact of open borders and so-called "free trade", and the 1% gets all the gains from it. The mass of people barely feel they have any control over the Parliament of the UK, never mind the even more remote government in Brussels.

Many see the EU _as constituted_ as something concocted by bureaucrats in business and government, for their own ends, a view which I think is correct. So the UK or Greece and the like being fed up with the EU should come as no surprise.

I think the EU as organized is a bad idea. I don't think European integration is a bad idea, but it was done without much consultation of the populace of Europe, and things like this are the result.

In the US, the popular candidates with mass rallies bucking against their party establishments have been Trump and Sanders, although Sanders was pushed aside for the establishment candidate with the help of superdelegates etc. Congressional job ratings for 2016 fluctuated between 13% to 18% approval, 75-84% disapproval. The average American feels alienated from Washington DC because Washington DC is unresponsive to the desires of the average American. The situation is not dissimilar from Europe.

<comment><USER278> > Working people feel all the negative impact of open borders and so-called > "free trade", and the 1% gets all the gains from it.

How does the 1% gain from the Working Time Directive?

<comment><USER279> Please don't cherry pick an (unmentioned) directive in a one-line rebuttal; try to challenge the comment's core arguments.

<comment><USER60> Actually the working time directive is right at the core of what the leave campaigners disliked about the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER276> anyone else concerned? The entire world seems to be moving towards fascist right wing nationalist politics. Whether it is the brexit, trumpism, or the austrian elections.

Europe keeps getting destabilized. If i was an enemy of europe and freedom, id be cheering. Instead i'm deeply concerned.

<comment><USER130> The EU is the opposite of freedom. This is Britain choosing to not let unelected bureaucrats of Brussels tell Britain what laws we should have.

<comment><USER280> Many of us non-UK people find your position hilarious. You seek freedom from a representative system in a monarchy whose upper legislature is composed of hereditary titulars. You'll say they don't do much, and I'll remind you that neither do the bureaucrats in Brussels.

<comment><USER130> The Monarchy could technically override our law, but never do. The house of lords can block legislation for up to a year, but only three times, and legislation can be pushed through with a simple commons majority.

Brussels however, makes up to 60% of our laws (It depends who you ask), and they override ours. We can't control our borders while in the EU, we get forced frustrating legislation on us, things like inferior low energy bulbs, which might be good for the environment but are nowhere near as good as traditional ones, and we can't vote out the people who make our laws when we don't like them.

Now we can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER281> I don't understand the hand-wringing.

Countries have engaged in trade for thousands of years - Brexit won't change that.

<comment><USER282> Oh yeah; they also engaged in trade wars, which often degenerated in conventional wars. The EU was built to avoid that.

Welcome back to the Hobbesian jungle.

<comment><USER130> What is nato for $200

<comment><USER282> An alliance against a common enemy (Russia). It doesn't exclude there won't ever be any contrast between members, which might result in military confrontation. History is full of alliances that ended for one reason or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> It's called the commonwealth, and it includes 30 percent of the land mass of earth.

<comment><USER283> But what percentage of the GDP?

<comment><USER284> Similar to the EU currently and growing much faster, India and the African nations have a lot more growth potential than modern day Europe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER285> I had no opinion about UK leaving Europe (because we don't know what their new situation will be), but I just wish a referendum existed every few years for all international treaties signed by our leaders, when they act as law. I'm looking at you, TPP and TTIP.

</comment><comment><USER286> Sigh....London should have a vote next to leave the UK.

</comment><comment><USER287> Ctrl-F:lies

We should be talking about the lies.

I'm pleased for the British and think in the long haul this is the correct decision.

Right now though that interests me less than what happened with the media. It was all lies on every level I can think of. Even the Kippers thought they had lost the war.

Is anybody going to talk about the fact that when the polls closed odds showed 95% chance of Leave?

This was all very highly coordinated propaganda. What other reasonable explanation is there? Occam's Razor says: conspiracy is the simplest explanation.

Really if you have a good explanation I'll be waiting to hear it.

</comment><comment><USER288> Please fix title. The article title is "EU referendum: BBC forecasts UK vote to leave". The count hasn't even finished yet, and it is still possible for the remain vote to win at the current time (albeit unlikely).

<comment><USER289> The current title of the actual article is "EU referendum: UK votes to leave in historic referendum".

It's still technically a forecast, but the BBC has called it and so has everybody else.

<comment><USER288> The count has finished now. My comment was referring to _before_ the count had finished, and the BBC title of the actual article was "BBC forecast: UK votes to leave EU".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER290> This is really a historic moment. It could signal the end of the Maastricht experiment.

A long and protracted disengagement period will only worsen volatility in the market, because of uncertainty around trade deals, as well as the political uncertainty of the UK itself.

Not to sound like I'm wearing a tinfoil hat, but it's not surprising that Soros decided to go long on gold when he did.

</comment><comment><USER291> They will come back- the world is gone, where superpowers try to charm the small players. Just look how the us stripped the swiss (a fellow democracy) of its main buisness-model (tax-avoidance). If you are not sumo-sized you will get shoved around, even with nukes.

</comment><comment><USER292> I think this is a chance for the UK to overthrow Switzerland in private banking. For the rest of us, who are not so private in banking, its time to consider moving to Berlin.

<comment><USER293> A few reasons why? (genuinely curious)

<comment><USER292> Cheaper rent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER294> Welcome to recession, England. You voted for it.

<comment><USER52> Optimism and over-confidence biases at work. Great :-/

</comment></comment><comment><USER295> Of course. Civilisation is built with wars and by killing those who don't share the values of the majority. Why? Because if you don't do it, somebody else will do it to you. As simple as that.

Pacifists are nuts.

<comment><USER296> Wait... are you honestly suggesting that the only way to advance civilization is to kill the people who disagree with you? Because if you are, then you and I have very different ideas of insanity.

<comment><USER295> Yes. I am saying that, and that if you don't do it, others will kill you. And if you don't believe me, there you have the current religious terrorism (or warfare) in Europe. Does it ring a bell? It's not like it hasn't happened thousands of times throughout history.

<comment><USER266> > _And if you don 't believe me, there you have the current religious > terrorism (or warfare) in Europe. Does it ring a bell?_

Yeah, there have been like 1000 (much less actually, but let's put it at that) victims in Europe in attacks in say, 10 years.

Europeans use to kill the same number of those people, in their own countries, where on top they ruled and occupied their lands, every month or so. And sometimes just for fun. And not in some ancient ages -- up to the 1960s, and in some places, today still.

Just two examples:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre)

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside- france...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside-frances- secret-war-396062.html)

<comment><USER297> > 1000

That's about a fraction of the number of muslims killed by islamic terrorism. Here in Turkey we had about five or six major ISIS suicide-bomber cases in the past twelve months, e.g. 30-odd dead in Suruc, 100-odd in Ankara, and in Istanbul, 10-odd in Cemberlitas, 5-10 in Taksim, 6 in Vezneciler (the most recent). In the recent 10 years there have been many Hizbullah attacks (I recall the HSBC bombing, tho vaguely). And I don't even talk about what the ISIS is doing in the levant at the moment, we'll learn the numbers later. I'll just add: there are about 3 million syrians here in Turkey, a couple million in Lebanon, and a minute fraction of that in Europe. And all that we have today is thanks to post-WWI european imperialism and imposed borders in the middle east.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER298> The English, even to this present day, are not known for being benevolent masters... but they are known for being violent ones, who will stop _at nothing_ to satisfy their short term interests. How many nations have the English downtrodden? How many do they still try to intimidate, bluff, or put pressure on, even as ordinary citizens in management positions?

Of small comfort then, is the fact that the English have abolished slavery in 1833.

To put it poetically, _with one hand I embrace you, with another I stick my blade into your throat, while my boot tramples on your broken body_ , that's the portrayal one might construct from history and contemporary actions and thinking of the English.

And "the commonwealth", oh my! Australia was a penal colony, of, you guessed it, the English. Not the Scottish, not the Welsh, not the Irish (Irish were busy being downtrodden, Scottish were busy massively emigrating because they were poor, while London threw galant parties, and the Welsh were trying to muster every bit of strength and intellect they could, so as not to be assimilated), and New Zealand... oh yes, in "the commonwealth", but not before the English killed a good number of Maori, isn't it?

And then, we didn't even touch upon the mess that the English caused in India, or in Africa (Zulus really "got theirs" from the English, didn't they?), or the mess on the Bosphorus, or the "Arabian question of Palestine", the consequences of which the world is still suffering from today, with all the strife going on in Palestine... ah yes, our English, everybody else in Europe drives on the right, except in Anglo-Saxon lands, where it's of course the opposite... everybody else is on the metric system because it's practical, except for the English, who still scoff at _that non-Imperial nonsense from Bruxelles_ , our "special Petunias", with their "traditions", who view the rest of _EU citizens_ as _immigrants_... with such friends, who needs enemies?

As sad as I am that the English have decided to ruin it once again for everybody, I say: if the English think the standards shouldn't apply to them, if they think that they are special, well good riddance, and stay out of EU.

<comment><USER299> > they are known for being violent ones

Which imperialist was the non-violent one then?

> Of small comfort then, is the fact that the English have abolished slavery > in 1833.

I imagine it was a major comfort to slaves at that time. But you probably know better.

> And "the commonwealth", oh my!

Oh my, indeed. Perhaps you can name another country, perhaps your own undoubtedly spotless nation, that has over 50 former colonies, comprising _two billion people_ across six continents, happily and willingly belonging to such a commonwealth.

Pretty strange thing for them to do, considering all the evil the British Empire committed non-stop, 24/7.

> we didn't even touch the mess that the English caused in India

The mess of leaving it as the world's largest democracy? (By population, that is. By size it just so happens to be another former colony of the British monsters.)

In fact if we make a short list of the most advanced/stable/richest/democratic former colonies in the world, we'll probably find it does not include the likes of Vietnam, Algeria, Congo, Mexico or the Philippines, but does include the likes of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, India.

Funny that.

> you think that you are special, well good riddance, and stay out of EU

How is it special to be outside of the EU? Most countries in the world are.

<comment><USER298>
      > Which imperialist was the non-violent one then?

Well that's the jolly old clinch, isn't it? Every imperialist was _violent_ , and the English _are_ an _empire_ , and as I am both want and compelled to agree with your so astutely observed argument, I'm afraid I have no recourse but to concur with you that the English are violent. Yes, yes, very well put, old chap, I say!

      > Perhaps you can name another country, perhaps your own
      > undoubtedly spotless nation,

My nation was never an empire, and it protected Europe for hundreds of years from marauders, rapists, murderers and especially from religious fanatics, and amazingly enough continues to do so even today. Not only that, but my nation paid the price of Europe not writing in or speaking Arabic or Turkish for that matter, and with a sizeable portion of her own territory, visible in the country's unique border, unlike any in Europe today. Not even the mighty British empire can claim such a feat. Oh, and while we were bleeding our hearts and bodies out for Europe, the English were sitting on their island, but they didn't come to help until 1914, and then they only came because they saw their own interest in it, and then they made a mess of things... everything that we had fought so hard to preserve across almost six centuries, they have destroyed on the altair of their own short-term interest in the span of a few decades. In one fell swoop, it was the British who decided to sell us into slavery as thanks for protecting Europe. In most recent history, while we were being brutally raped and slaughtered, tortured by being beaten with iron bars, or electrodes and high current put through the testicles of our people, while we cried for help, it was the British who had sided with those who did this to us, while they were doing it, and purposely delayed any action of the European Union while this was taking place. Jolly good, that!

And yet, even though we dislike them, and we do not trust them, we bear the English no ill will and will continue to protect Europe as we have always done. That is the ethical and moral high ground which not even the mighty British empire can claim. To subjugate, to murder, to plunder, yes, but not to protect as we will continue to do, _even those who have done us wrong_. And while my nation isn't spotless, it feels pretty good to be the protector rather than all these other things that the English have wrought upon the world. Yep, life is great.

      > that has over 50 former colonies,

_The Sun never sets on the British empire_ , isn't that how the saying goes?

It is not a point to be argued in favor of one's honor, but of one's eternal shame at subjugating, murdering and stealing from others over the span of several centuries.

      > The mess of leaving it as the world's largest democracy?

It's _grossly impolite_ , to the point of not _minding one 's p's and q's_, to imply that the English are somehow deserving for establishment of democracy in India, an honor that history has recorded as going to one Mahatma Gandhi. It would be awful, just horrid, don't you agree, to claim someone else's accomplishment as one's own, wouldn't it? I mean that would strike at the core of the good old proper British values, almost bordering on the waffling, wouldn't it now?

<comment><USER300> Given your narrative of English colonialism, pardon me if I don't entirely trust your account of your own countries history...

<comment><USER298> Your _belief_ is not crucial to the argument. I do pardon you, of course, please, think nothing of it.

<comment><USER146> Please stop posting uncivil and unsubstantive comments to Hacker News, and no more political rants, please, either.

<comment><USER298> The truth is always uncivil; and as for unsubstantive, what I wrote can be easily corroborated by any history book.

The English left the EU, and they caused a mess, as usual. They believe that they are special, that EU norms, standards and regulations and laws do not apply or should not apply to them, and you have the nerve to label me uncivil for pointing out that they did this _en masse_ before in history? By the by, the parent topic is "UK votes to leave EU" and wouldn't you know it, that is a purely political subject.

<comment><USER146> > _and they caused a mess, as usual_

This is an example of how your posts are uncivil. It's not a factual observation, but a passive-aggressive potshot at an entire population. So is "They believe that they are special".

If you do this again, we will ban your account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER301> It probably "natural" for island nation with its own currency to remain "independent".

So, economically UK is doomed to be new Japan.

</comment><comment><USER302> This is going to hammer them so hard, they're going to have to change 'pounds sterling' to 'pounds cupric'...

</comment><comment><USER303> Populism _is seen as bad_ by people who want centralization of power (socialists of all borders in general, as well as fascists). So if you have been fed the socialist propaganda for years when living in the EU, you assume it's bad.

<comment><USER146> Please don't call names in arguments ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)), especially politically inflammatory ones.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966245) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER304> When left-winger insults right-winger, it's not against TOS, but when right- winger insult left-winger, it is. Curious, really...

<comment><USER146> That's quite untrue, and a bit an impetuous conclusion to jump to. We work hard at doing our job professionally, including not moderating HN for ideological reasons.

Of course we have biases, but (a) we consciously work at suspending them, (b) they're probably not what you think they are, and (c) one cannot accurately assess another's bias by consulting one's own passions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER299> > Young people are still building their lives, trying to establish their > career. They're likely going to be denied the opportunity to live and work > in 27 countries.

Why? Do you think only EU citizens are allowed to live and work in the EU? Do you think British people are now banned from entry into the EU?

Most people - young or old - do not even _want_ to live and work in another European country.

> I think it's pretty disgraceful that they've torpedoed our future based on > their hazy rose-coloured memories of some supposedly-better past.

I think it's pretty disgraceful that people like you demonstrate such incredible arrogance that your _minority_ opinion is somehow innately superior; constructing ridiculous fantasies of why people voted to leave, based on absurd generalisations and a childish, rose-tinted view of the EU.

There's nothing to stop you living in an EU country, if you think by virtue of those two letters it's such a utopia compared to the UK or any other non-EU country (aka almost every country on the planet).

<comment><USER146> We've banned this account because you've repeatedly violated the HN guidelines both in this thread and elsewhere on the site. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email firstname.lastname@example.com and promise to follow the rules in the future.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11968904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11968904) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER305> > Obama threatened the UK of no trade deal.

He NEVER said that. You're either lying or ignorant.

He simply said that the UK would go to the back of the line for trade deals and given it is simply a smaller market than the EU this is understandably so.

<comment><USER147> _You 're either lying or ignorant._

Fuck you

<comment><USER146> Although this is a bannable offense, we're not going to ban you because threeseed shouldn't have posted anything of the sort. But please don't do this again. If someone else breaks the guidelines, don't respond by breaking them in turn. That makes HN a worse place for everybody.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER306> What about the precedent of the previous, say, five or six centuries of European history? All of that is, in part, the story of "other countries' own interests."

History has rightly judged Neville Chamberlain as an abysmal failure in dealing with German interests. I'm happy that Britain has given Merkel and her cronies the finger.

<comment><USER307> Neville Chamberlain <\--> Adolf Hitler

David Cameron <\--> Angela Merkel

According to your comment, Angela Merkel is about as evil and reckless as Adolf Hitler.

Okay. I am not taking this seriously.

<comment><USER306> You've missed the point, which was about the UK being at the mercy of other countries' interests. My argument was simply that that is always a factor as long as we don't have one world government (and maybe even then - read all the comments about Scotland for a small picture of that.)

There was no comparison of Hitler and Merkel implied. Britain and Germany are both far bigger than any of their past or present leaders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> But you assume that people in the UK have an alternative to those German cars. They don't. Germany makes better cars than anyone else. Brits will still buy them, they will just now be more expensive.

Two words: British Leyland

<comment><USER212> That's not how pricing works. Higher pricing for German cars will lower sales substantially in favor of cheaper cars. Even if someone still buys a German car, they will probably choose less expensive options. There's no way that the continent starts a trade war with the UK.

Neither Hillary nor Trump agree with Obama's "back of the queue" comment. So no matter who wins in November in the US, they will almost certainly be very eager to make a good trade deal with the UK. Australia and New Zealand will too. Hopefully, this will result in a reinvigorated Anglosphere.

<comment><USER56> Perhaps in a perfectly fair and free economy ... such as in a collective group of countries that all trade freely with each other. That may now be over. Britain still needs cars and, unable to produce them locally, may well tolerate the higher prices.

<comment><USER120> Also consider BMW/Mercedes/VW-Audi as political influences in Germany - <USER5> are going to do anything they can to keep their products flowing, and prices down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER308> Doom and gloom, doom and gloom! In your world, in order to survive England needs to kneel before the unelected bureaucrats of Brussels.

<comment><USER282> I'm tired of this unelected trope. MEPs are elected, and they have final say on legislation. Commissioners _PROPOSE_ legislation (which is then amended by Parliament committees, usually), are nominated BY THE GOVERNMENTS YOU ELECTED, and can be dismissed by the Commission President, who answers to the ELECTED European Parliament.

The failure to make people understand Lisbon 2009 reforms is what is killing the EU.

<comment><USER309> Not to mention the UK is ruled by a hereditory monarchy with an unelected upper house of parliament.

<comment><USER155> You forgot to mention she has no executive power at all and this is symbolized at the start of every parliamentary session in the the Black Rod ritual. Check it out!

Yes, Britain has a revising upper chamber populated by people who've made some kind of distinguished contribution to British society during their careers. As with all human enterprises, mistakes occur & some members (peers) have questionable qualifications and corruptive practices do sometimes surface as everywhere else. Sometimes political cronies are appointed. This does not mean we throw the bath water out with the baby.

The upper house provides a venue for extended discussion of laws put forward by the lower house but ultimately has no power to overturn decisions made in the lower house. Most members of the House of Lords (often experts in various subjects) have no or minimal vested interests in the issues brought before them and can therefore offer totally independent opinions since they do not have to answer to an electorate.

Being unelected does not necessarily always equate to a zero qualification for a limited role in law making.

<comment><USER310> Not quite true. All UK legislation must be signed by the Queen (or her proxy) before it becomes all law. Therefore monarch has final veto over any legislation by refusing to sign.

It's rarely invoked and if it were to happen on a serious piece of legislation then Britain would in all likelihood become a republic shortly thereafter.

The British "constitution" is largely based around checks and balances based around mutually assured destruction should any party stray from their expected role. This is one such example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER311> Since for some reason the larger, older, higher-voted, more popular thread was marked as a dupe I'm copying my popular comment over here:

The BBC just announced that "Britain has voted to leave the European Union".

Leave only needs 2,105,984 more votes to win. [edit 12:15am EST] 1,715,256 votes now and closing fast. [edit 12:19am EST] 1,196,678 [edit 12:27am EST] 894,189 [edit 12:31am EST] 785,549 [edit 12:37am EST] 741,795 [edit 12:38am EST] 592,337 [edit 12:45am EST] 448,596 [edit 12:46am EST] 373,532 [edit 12:51am EST] 308,519 [edit 12:57am EST] 94,635 [edit 1:00am EST] 37,665 [edit 1:02am EST] 0. The UK has officially voted to leave.

Predicted result: Leave 52%, Remain 48%

Wow. So what happens now?

\- Scotland voted 62% Remain. The SNP said it will call a second independence referendum if Leave wins. Many estimate that the independence movement will win this time around. Literally every single Scottish division voted to remain.

\- Gibraltar will probably be royally screwed [0] as well as some other areas that are heavily dependent on trade/travel with EU countries

\- The pound drops like a rock. Was stable at $1.48 all day, peaked at $1.50 earlier after Remain was doing well (~6pm EST), now at $1.33 (12:13am EST), now at $1.32 (12:21am EST) and the lowest level since 1985. In 1985 it hit $1.08, which was then the lowest value in a very long time.

\- The pound is down 17% from the yen by the way.

\- Other independence movements in other EU countries gain a bit of legitimacy. The euro drops (currently at $1.09, down four cents or 3%), and the yen gains (currently up 6%) (12:25am EST)

\- For those of us fortunate enough to have our savings in dollars, everything denominated in pounds is currently on a 12% off sale.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11965342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11965342)

</comment><comment><USER312> smh uk

</comment><comment><USER313> I wish they would revert to Imperial units.

</comment><comment><USER314> My gosh, loads of people commenting.

Hacker news is indulged in politics as we speak. It's a shame really.

But to add my views to the board...

Yes the EU wasn't perfect. I wouldn't call it undemocratic, or despotic, or communist, fascist, etc...

But it was start of something getting people together. Making Europe a whole.

Now the Brexit sparked other right wing parties in member countries to gain popularity. And we all can remember where far right nationalism leads to.

Remember Hitler being on the cover of Time magazine? Because I do.

<comment><USER315> While I agree with you, I don't understand why "Hackers" shouldn't comment politics. How is that a shame?

<comment><USER316> Because it's in the guidelines:

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic."

See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6120530)

Key takeaway: we can comment on politics as much as we want (I recently signed up for strongtowns.org !) but here is not a good place for it.

<comment><USER315> I disagree. "Most stories about politics [...]" implies that some are ok. The criterion is "[...] unless they're evidence of some interesting phenomenon.". As the Brexit is indeed a precedent, I would argue this story isn't off-topic. The amount of comments underlines this conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER317> I am from the US visiting Germany for the last couple of weeks. You guys need to cool it with the football. Parading in the streets wearing the German flag after winning a game vs Poland, harassing someone wearing a polish flag cap. Really? Combine that with an EU breakdown and you guys are going to start WW3.

<comment><USER318> Germany didn't win, it was a tie.

<comment><USER61> I guess that makes Germany's record in world wars 0-2-1 then?</comment></comment></comment>