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Every single article I have read had indicated this is terrible. I have seen a lot of people who would I guess be classified in America as progressive liberals,

Every single article I have read had indicated this is terrible. I have seen a lot of people who would I guess be classified in America as progressive liberals, e.g. the types who speak of privelege and safe-spaces, decrying how the country has gone to ruin via fascism. Just in general, younger people seem to be totally against this. All the 'economists' on CNN, FOX, Bloomberg, ect are saying this was stupid and economically catastrophic. All this is to say, everyone has pretty much decided this is terrible for Britain. Is it? I have seen some data and understand that they will lose an outsize ability to steer European affairs and that they will lose out economically because they contribute less to the euro union than they net back. However, there hasn't been much explanation other than sillyness and name calling. What did they gain, and honestly why is this so negative. There hasn't been a particularly strong or cohesive explanation other than saying Cameron is an idiot and the world is over?

jessriedel 10y ago
I don't really disagree with that, but it seems only tangential to the OP article. "The storm" here is the process of Britain extricating itself from the EU, which everyone agrees will be very complicated and messy regardless of whether Brexit is net good or bad. The Economist is just arguing that a power vacuum at the start of this process is bad.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  And that the "Leave" campaign seriously did not expect to win and had literally no plan for winning. They certainly didn't expect Cameron to go "you know what, bugger this." Hence Johnson and Gove's faces on Friday morning.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    That's the ultimate crime here. This was really all about the personal ambitions of Cameron, Johnson, and Gove. They were using the vote to gain control over the government. It's doubtful if they're even particularly Eurosceptic. What they've actually done is broken apart the UK, destabilised Europe, and rocked the world economy. All for personal gain - and now they've won it, it has turned into something they really don't want to deal with. Honestly, they should be imprisoned for this for the rest of their natural lives. The most applicable crime is treason. Because if this isn't repaired, the UK will literally be over - politically, economically, socially, and culturally. The absolute best that can happen here is that the EU reconsiders some of its neoliberal arrogance and becomes more accountable, the UK has a referendum or election with an honest promise of a new relationship, and somehow everyone moves on, with some new and more reasonable faces in charge. The absolute worst doesn't bear thinking about, so I really hope we don't end up there instead.
    - peterclary 10y ago
      I assume you're being down voted for suggesting that recklessly risking the well-being and rights of pretty much everyone in the country, and tanking the economy, in pursuit of personal gain, and telling lie after lie to do it, is treasonous. The fact that this aspect isn't being touched on by most MPs, and all sides are pressing on with "the people have spoken", even though it's clear that many of the people were completely deceived, suggests that the MPs don't regard outright lying as a big deal. After all, if politicians were held to their word by anything more than an occasional general election (mostly decided by identity politics) then where would they be?
  - dingaling 10y ago
    > They certainly didn't expect Cameron to go "you know what, bugger this." The Queen can technically refuse his resignation. It would be quite encouraging if she did so, and told him to get on with running the country with the mandate he has been given by the people.
    - wool_gather 10y ago
      What is she going to do? Force him at gunpoint to reluctantly preside over the most important, unprecedentedly delicate and intricate, utterly thankless, administrative and diplomatic process of the decade? That sounds like a recipe for success. It's going to be difficult enough for someone who actually thinks it's a good idea to get it right. --- P.M.: Your Majesty, please accept my resignation from office. H.M.: I'm sorry, Mr. Cameron, I cannot accept it at this time. Please get on with your responsibilities to the Commonwealth. P.M.: ... Respectfully, Ma'am, I'd rather you just locked me in the Tower. I'll be on the beach in Torremolinos if you want me.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > The Queen can technically refuse his resignation. It would be quite encouraging if she did so, Yes, because what Britain needs is the Queen triggering a constitutional crisis to force a leader who doesn't even believe in the Brexit to, against his will, negotiate the terms for it. Because that would make the situation better.
Lerc 10y ago
Not being in the EU is not nearly as big a deal as leaving the EU. They need an entire framework for dealing with the EU that doesn't currently exist. It's like Britain just drank some poison, then went into a shop and said "Hi, I drank some poison and you're the only person that sells the antidote, What kind of deal can you give me on that?"
- vonklaus 10y ago
  This is case and point what I indicated above. Bizarre assertions and analogies that don't even attempt to explain why it is bad. I am having trouble finding out legitimate answers to why this is actually heralded as a catastrophicly bad move: > "Hi, I drank some poison and you're the only person that sells the antidote, What kind of deal can you give me on that?" Doesn't really cover it. I guess it could be translated to, there is a mismatch in leverage for trade negotiations and GB will need the EU much more than they need it, thus weakening their position.
  - davidgerard 10y ago
    * Because "leave" involves untangling the UK from the EU, which is ridiculously more complicated than never having joined at all. * Because Scotland overwhelmingly voted "Remain", and are already talking about another independence referendum so they can stay in Europe. * Because a large chunk of the "Leave" voters (I don't have percentages, I expect they'll show up soon) are regretting it already. They're the dogs that chased a car and caught it and don't know what to do. * Because everyone who has any idea what "leave" would imply thought it was such a bad idea that they didn't take the idea seriously. * Because the "Leave" campaign didn't expect to win and had (seriously) no plan at all for how to achieve this. * Because everything the "Leave" campaign promised was literally lies, and now they have to explain this to the people who voted their way. * Because David Cameron originally said that if "leave" won, he'd invoke Article 50 the next day - and instead, he went "you know what? bugger this" and resigned, punting it to whichever unlucky bozo takes over as Tory leader and will thus be personally responsible for visiting a disaster upon the UK. * Because all of the details of the above, and plenty more besides. It's a cluster of clusterfucks, each of which contains another, smaller, clusterfuck.
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anon1385 10y ago
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/the-eu-will-treat-britain-like-greece/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/the-eu-will-treat... (The Telegraph is a right wing paper that backed Brexit)
Xylakant 10y ago
I see this as terrible for the UK for various reasons. First, there's the economic reasons. They used to be one of the largest economies in the EU and could have (if they wanted) a lot of influence. Many companies used the UK as a beachhead into the EU - most notable financial institutions which benefited from passporting (only having to follow UK regulations for financial products) and Chinese investors that used the ties between UK and Hongkong as a springboard. The UK economy was very focused on delivering services to the EU. The UK also imports substantial amounts of food from the EU. They're not going to starve on their little rock, but tomato prices are expected to rise. There's also not much left of the good old british industry. They basically fall out of all trade deals. They don't have a substantial amount of trade negotiators on staff any more and all of a sudden they'll have to renegotiate all deals in a two-year time span or fall back on basic WTO terms. They also lost a lot of weight in these negotiations. Where before they were members of one of the largest markets they're now still a large economy, but all of a sudden 5/6th smaller. The worst consequences I see on the political front: The government unraveling, the brexit supporters without a plan of how to continue or even what goal they're actually fighting for (EEA membership, wing it alone). The opposition falling apart. Nobody know what'll happen to Nothern Ireland since the peace agreement is governed and supported by EU law. Also, the irish border would be an EU outer border, passport checks and all. The only party with a plan are the Scots, and their plan is to leave the club and run. The campaign was divisive with an MP being shot. Open racism is surging upwards - there have been attacks against the polish cultural center that was instituted for the polish war veterans that were part of the Air Battle for Britain. And all of that for a power struggle between Cameron and Johnson. This is why it's bad.
Symmetry 10y ago
The way international relations work nowadays there's no default of free trade. You need specific deals in place for trade to occur. Britain is, like pretty much every country, very dependent on trade and now that it isn't getting trade deals as part of the EU it will have to suddenly negotiate its own. Also, a lot of recent British prosperity comes from London being the banking center of Europe. Countries tend to handle most of their banking internally but the exceptional connectedness of the European system let Britain take over more of the market then it would otherwise be possible to do, across national boundaries. But on the other hand, stock markets in France and Germany have gone down further than those in Britain. And stock markets in Southern Europe even more so. So it looks like a lot of the market is really concerned about what this means for the recent Eurozone trouble and whether there'll be more countries leaving. Or more likely there are reasons that aren't clear to me. But as a famous Brit once said there's a lot of ruin in a nation and this won't be the end of the world for Britain. I can imagine someone looking back on this in 30 years and saying it was all for the best, possibly. But 5 years out I don't think anyone will be saying that.
- makomk 10y ago
  Whether stock markets in the rest of Europe have gone down further than those in Britain depends on how you measure them, I think. Remember that the pound's dived against the euro, so if you're comparing the UK stock market drop in pounds to the European stock market drops in euros you're not comparing like with like.
  - estel 10y ago
    Yeah, you can pick and choose your index too. The FTSE100 might "only" be down 3.5% (excluding the currency drop), but the FTSE250 is down 7.2% vs the DAX's 6.82%.
neffy 10y ago
It all depends on what happens next... which is never a good position to be in when you've already committed to the outcome. There are some 1.5 million British working and living in Europe. Approximately 900,000 of them are retirees living in Spain. Do they get thrown out, required to pay for health insurance, no longer get cost of living increases to their state pensions? The working British, do they get to stay, or do they also have to come back. Apply for local citizenship? Trade. One of the more priceless moments in the vote coverage Thursday night was one of the Brexiters saying 'of course, there would still be free trade with Europe - the Germans sell a lot of cars to the UK.' Well, yes, and I'm sure they'll still be happy to sell to the UK, how about buying? Oh the good side is if the pound stays down, exports are cheaper - but England only produces 60% of the food it needs, and that particular bill hits everybody. Finance. One of the issues lurking in the background is the role of the UK banks in the general debacle that is the world financial system at this time. The Europeans want to regulate the system more, and they particularly want the British to shutdown some of the more blatant exploits being practiced there (Britain is something of a haven for complex financial scam^H^H 'deals'), and also runs some real tax havens. This is the British version of the Trump problem, the people with the money from exploiting the system are now the people with power - it would be really interesting to know exactly what it is that the predominantly upper class supporters of Brexit in the Conservative party want to do that membership of the EU is blocking. But probably nothing good. Then there's the issue with the pound - well I guess everybody who owes money in Sterling will be pleased this week. (btw. if the UK moves to push interest rates up, that's Global Financial crisis 2 there and then.) Immigration - some of this is an old tradition of 'playing the orange flag' (exploiting ethnic divisions for political gain), some of it is bad economic conditions (due to British Government policies, technological change, and the long running adjustment to the loss of the empire) causing stress . Leaving that aside, there are just as many angrily anti-racist folks in England as there are racists, and judging by newspaper comments over the last few days, they're about to head straight for each other's throats. Of course, if the immigration issue is taken to its logical conclusion, then Britain swaps ~1,5 million able bodied Europeans, for ~900,000 pensioners and some really pissed off able bodied British, who weren't able to get permanent residency wherever they happened to be living. Scotland may need to thing about that one carefully. Amongst them, a lot of medical staff in the NHS: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/26/nhs-foreign-nationals-immigration-health-service https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/26/nhs-foreign-... Now the real issue there, is that the number of medical college places over the last couple of decades hasn't kept up with the population growth and retirement. Since this ought to be one of the easiest possible things to plan, it's a horrible failure, but of the British Government, not of the EU. London - which is most of the economy these days (another huge issue, but again not the EU's fault), is increasingly integrated into the EU through the tunnel, and as a financial centre - not surprisingly Mayor Khan is already advocating for a special deal for London with the EU. While the rest of the country hated London, because it dominates the economy, even before the EU split got so exposed - and in fact British government is horribly centralised in London these days, which is a large part of the issue with Scotland. So you can just imagine how well that one is going down. And underneath all this is the Internet, busily creating the September to end all Septembers, and fast emulating the poor old Babel fish which, "by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation".
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estel 10y ago
> What did they gain, and honestly why is this so negative. There hasn't been a particularly strong or cohesive explanation other than saying Cameron is an idiot and the world is over? Obviously, only my two euro-cents: There's a deep-seated feeling in the British population that laws should ultimately be sovereign and not made by the European Union - there's a firm belief that leaving the EU allows Parliament to make its own laws without outside interference. Obviously there are a range of silly restrictions of things that previously were not possible within the EU framework that now are. One example might be that the UK was unable to eliminate VAT from sanitary products within the EU. I mostly subscribe to the more emotional and wishy-washy negativity reasons, but some more concrete negatives: * The City of London is very important to the UK economy and there are genuine fears that large multi-nationals who headquarter in London to access the EU market will have no choice but to relocate onto the continent. * Lots of other parts of industry genuinely rely on cheap labour from Eastern Europe (to the order of magnitude of tens of thousands per year). There's a fear that they will not be able to access this labour, driving costs up. * Short term instability and subsequent capital flight have a non-insignificant chance of leading to recession, or at least reduced growth. * Those of us who are lucky enough to have the opportunity enjoy the ability to travel and work freely within the EU; and EU citizens in the UK are worried about their future status. * Many firms working within across the EU are worried about complications if the UK does not remain in a free trade zone with the EU. There are already reports of UK startups losing investments and companies who have lost contracts due to the uncertainty. * There's lots of scientific cooperation that sees UK universities receiving considerable research grants from the EU. Even without a squeeze from a poorer economy, there's not much faith that the UK Government will have the same spending priorities. Some of this will become more clear as we move through a negotiation process to exit, but there are a range of unknowns and no clear vision from the Government what a post-EU UK will look like. That causes uncertainty both amongst the people and markets. I'm trying to leave aside the short and medium term domestic and social problems that the referendum has both highlighted and bought about, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that they're just as pressing as the exit negotiations themselves.
ocfx 10y ago
It's not terrible for Britain. Britain will actually gain in the long run over this as the US will broker better deals with Britain than the EU could arrange. They will save a ton of money on money they have to give the EU every year as well. The majority of Brit's spoke up and decided they wanted out. If people didn't want to honor the vote why have it in the first place? The thing is that most of the uproar you see from people is from people who either are not old enough to vote or didn't go vote at all. The rest is just the media pandering to liberal sentiment since it's en vogue.

jessriedel 10y ago

I don't really disagree with that, but it seems only tangential to the OP article. "The storm" here is the process of Britain extricating itself from the EU, which everyone agrees will be very complicated and messy regardless of whether Brexit is net good or bad. The Economist is just arguing that a power vacuum at the start of this process is bad.

davidgerard 10y ago
And that the "Leave" campaign seriously did not expect to win and had literally no plan for winning. They certainly didn't expect Cameron to go "you know what, bugger this." Hence Johnson and Gove's faces on Friday morning.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  That's the ultimate crime here. This was really all about the personal ambitions of Cameron, Johnson, and Gove. They were using the vote to gain control over the government. It's doubtful if they're even particularly Eurosceptic. What they've actually done is broken apart the UK, destabilised Europe, and rocked the world economy. All for personal gain - and now they've won it, it has turned into something they really don't want to deal with. Honestly, they should be imprisoned for this for the rest of their natural lives. The most applicable crime is treason. Because if this isn't repaired, the UK will literally be over - politically, economically, socially, and culturally. The absolute best that can happen here is that the EU reconsiders some of its neoliberal arrogance and becomes more accountable, the UK has a referendum or election with an honest promise of a new relationship, and somehow everyone moves on, with some new and more reasonable faces in charge. The absolute worst doesn't bear thinking about, so I really hope we don't end up there instead.
  - peterclary 10y ago
    I assume you're being down voted for suggesting that recklessly risking the well-being and rights of pretty much everyone in the country, and tanking the economy, in pursuit of personal gain, and telling lie after lie to do it, is treasonous. The fact that this aspect isn't being touched on by most MPs, and all sides are pressing on with "the people have spoken", even though it's clear that many of the people were completely deceived, suggests that the MPs don't regard outright lying as a big deal. After all, if politicians were held to their word by anything more than an occasional general election (mostly decided by identity politics) then where would they be?
- dingaling 10y ago
  > They certainly didn't expect Cameron to go "you know what, bugger this." The Queen can technically refuse his resignation. It would be quite encouraging if she did so, and told him to get on with running the country with the mandate he has been given by the people.
  - wool_gather 10y ago
    What is she going to do? Force him at gunpoint to reluctantly preside over the most important, unprecedentedly delicate and intricate, utterly thankless, administrative and diplomatic process of the decade? That sounds like a recipe for success. It's going to be difficult enough for someone who actually thinks it's a good idea to get it right. --- P.M.: Your Majesty, please accept my resignation from office. H.M.: I'm sorry, Mr. Cameron, I cannot accept it at this time. Please get on with your responsibilities to the Commonwealth. P.M.: ... Respectfully, Ma'am, I'd rather you just locked me in the Tower. I'll be on the beach in Torremolinos if you want me.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > The Queen can technically refuse his resignation. It would be quite encouraging if she did so, Yes, because what Britain needs is the Queen triggering a constitutional crisis to force a leader who doesn't even believe in the Brexit to, against his will, negotiate the terms for it. Because that would make the situation better.

Lerc 10y ago

Not being in the EU is not nearly as big a deal as leaving the EU. They need an entire framework for dealing with the EU that doesn't currently exist. It's like Britain just drank some poison, then went into a shop and said "Hi, I drank some poison and you're the only person that sells the antidote, What kind of deal can you give me on that?"

vonklaus 10y ago
This is case and point what I indicated above. Bizarre assertions and analogies that don't even attempt to explain why it is bad. I am having trouble finding out legitimate answers to why this is actually heralded as a catastrophicly bad move: > "Hi, I drank some poison and you're the only person that sells the antidote, What kind of deal can you give me on that?" Doesn't really cover it. I guess it could be translated to, there is a mismatch in leverage for trade negotiations and GB will need the EU much more than they need it, thus weakening their position.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  * Because "leave" involves untangling the UK from the EU, which is ridiculously more complicated than never having joined at all. * Because Scotland overwhelmingly voted "Remain", and are already talking about another independence referendum so they can stay in Europe. * Because a large chunk of the "Leave" voters (I don't have percentages, I expect they'll show up soon) are regretting it already. They're the dogs that chased a car and caught it and don't know what to do. * Because everyone who has any idea what "leave" would imply thought it was such a bad idea that they didn't take the idea seriously. * Because the "Leave" campaign didn't expect to win and had (seriously) no plan at all for how to achieve this. * Because everything the "Leave" campaign promised was literally lies, and now they have to explain this to the people who voted their way. * Because David Cameron originally said that if "leave" won, he'd invoke Article 50 the next day - and instead, he went "you know what? bugger this" and resigned, punting it to whichever unlucky bozo takes over as Tory leader and will thus be personally responsible for visiting a disaster upon the UK. * Because all of the details of the above, and plenty more besides. It's a cluster of clusterfucks, each of which contains another, smaller, clusterfuck.

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anon1385 10y ago

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/the-eu-will-treat-britain-like-greece/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/the-eu-will-treat... (The Telegraph is a right wing paper that backed Brexit)

Xylakant 10y ago

I see this as terrible for the UK for various reasons. First, there's the economic reasons. They used to be one of the largest economies in the EU and could have (if they wanted) a lot of influence. Many companies used the UK as a beachhead into the EU - most notable financial institutions which benefited from passporting (only having to follow UK regulations for financial products) and Chinese investors that used the ties between UK and Hongkong as a springboard. The UK economy was very focused on delivering services to the EU. The UK also imports substantial amounts of food from the EU. They're not going to starve on their little rock, but tomato prices are expected to rise. There's also not much left of the good old british industry. They basically fall out of all trade deals. They don't have a substantial amount of trade negotiators on staff any more and all of a sudden they'll have to renegotiate all deals in a two-year time span or fall back on basic WTO terms. They also lost a lot of weight in these negotiations. Where before they were members of one of the largest markets they're now still a large economy, but all of a sudden 5/6th smaller. The worst consequences I see on the political front: The government unraveling, the brexit supporters without a plan of how to continue or even what goal they're actually fighting for (EEA membership, wing it alone). The opposition falling apart. Nobody know what'll happen to Nothern Ireland since the peace agreement is governed and supported by EU law. Also, the irish border would be an EU outer border, passport checks and all. The only party with a plan are the Scots, and their plan is to leave the club and run. The campaign was divisive with an MP being shot. Open racism is surging upwards - there have been attacks against the polish cultural center that was instituted for the polish war veterans that were part of the Air Battle for Britain. And all of that for a power struggle between Cameron and Johnson. This is why it's bad.

Symmetry 10y ago

The way international relations work nowadays there's no default of free trade. You need specific deals in place for trade to occur. Britain is, like pretty much every country, very dependent on trade and now that it isn't getting trade deals as part of the EU it will have to suddenly negotiate its own. Also, a lot of recent British prosperity comes from London being the banking center of Europe. Countries tend to handle most of their banking internally but the exceptional connectedness of the European system let Britain take over more of the market then it would otherwise be possible to do, across national boundaries. But on the other hand, stock markets in France and Germany have gone down further than those in Britain. And stock markets in Southern Europe even more so. So it looks like a lot of the market is really concerned about what this means for the recent Eurozone trouble and whether there'll be more countries leaving. Or more likely there are reasons that aren't clear to me. But as a famous Brit once said there's a lot of ruin in a nation and this won't be the end of the world for Britain. I can imagine someone looking back on this in 30 years and saying it was all for the best, possibly. But 5 years out I don't think anyone will be saying that.

makomk 10y ago
Whether stock markets in the rest of Europe have gone down further than those in Britain depends on how you measure them, I think. Remember that the pound's dived against the euro, so if you're comparing the UK stock market drop in pounds to the European stock market drops in euros you're not comparing like with like.
- estel 10y ago
  Yeah, you can pick and choose your index too. The FTSE100 might "only" be down 3.5% (excluding the currency drop), but the FTSE250 is down 7.2% vs the DAX's 6.82%.

neffy 10y ago

It all depends on what happens next... which is never a good position to be in when you've already committed to the outcome. There are some 1.5 million British working and living in Europe. Approximately 900,000 of them are retirees living in Spain. Do they get thrown out, required to pay for health insurance, no longer get cost of living increases to their state pensions? The working British, do they get to stay, or do they also have to come back. Apply for local citizenship? Trade. One of the more priceless moments in the vote coverage Thursday night was one of the Brexiters saying 'of course, there would still be free trade with Europe - the Germans sell a lot of cars to the UK.' Well, yes, and I'm sure they'll still be happy to sell to the UK, how about buying? Oh the good side is if the pound stays down, exports are cheaper - but England only produces 60% of the food it needs, and that particular bill hits everybody. Finance. One of the issues lurking in the background is the role of the UK banks in the general debacle that is the world financial system at this time. The Europeans want to regulate the system more, and they particularly want the British to shutdown some of the more blatant exploits being practiced there (Britain is something of a haven for complex financial scam^H^H 'deals'), and also runs some real tax havens. This is the British version of the Trump problem, the people with the money from exploiting the system are now the people with power - it would be really interesting to know exactly what it is that the predominantly upper class supporters of Brexit in the Conservative party want to do that membership of the EU is blocking. But probably nothing good. Then there's the issue with the pound - well I guess everybody who owes money in Sterling will be pleased this week. (btw. if the UK moves to push interest rates up, that's Global Financial crisis 2 there and then.) Immigration - some of this is an old tradition of 'playing the orange flag' (exploiting ethnic divisions for political gain), some of it is bad economic conditions (due to British Government policies, technological change, and the long running adjustment to the loss of the empire) causing stress . Leaving that aside, there are just as many angrily anti-racist folks in England as there are racists, and judging by newspaper comments over the last few days, they're about to head straight for each other's throats. Of course, if the immigration issue is taken to its logical conclusion, then Britain swaps ~1,5 million able bodied Europeans, for ~900,000 pensioners and some really pissed off able bodied British, who weren't able to get permanent residency wherever they happened to be living. Scotland may need to thing about that one carefully. Amongst them, a lot of medical staff in the NHS: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/26/nhs-foreign-nationals-immigration-health-service https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/26/nhs-foreign-... Now the real issue there, is that the number of medical college places over the last couple of decades hasn't kept up with the population growth and retirement. Since this ought to be one of the easiest possible things to plan, it's a horrible failure, but of the British Government, not of the EU. London - which is most of the economy these days (another huge issue, but again not the EU's fault), is increasingly integrated into the EU through the tunnel, and as a financial centre - not surprisingly Mayor Khan is already advocating for a special deal for London with the EU. While the rest of the country hated London, because it dominates the economy, even before the EU split got so exposed - and in fact British government is horribly centralised in London these days, which is a large part of the issue with Scotland. So you can just imagine how well that one is going down. And underneath all this is the Internet, busily creating the September to end all Septembers, and fast emulating the poor old Babel fish which, "by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation".

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

estel 10y ago

> What did they gain, and honestly why is this so negative. There hasn't been a particularly strong or cohesive explanation other than saying Cameron is an idiot and the world is over? Obviously, only my two euro-cents: There's a deep-seated feeling in the British population that laws should ultimately be sovereign and not made by the European Union - there's a firm belief that leaving the EU allows Parliament to make its own laws without outside interference. Obviously there are a range of silly restrictions of things that previously were not possible within the EU framework that now are. One example might be that the UK was unable to eliminate VAT from sanitary products within the EU. I mostly subscribe to the more emotional and wishy-washy negativity reasons, but some more concrete negatives: * The City of London is very important to the UK economy and there are genuine fears that large multi-nationals who headquarter in London to access the EU market will have no choice but to relocate onto the continent. * Lots of other parts of industry genuinely rely on cheap labour from Eastern Europe (to the order of magnitude of tens of thousands per year). There's a fear that they will not be able to access this labour, driving costs up. * Short term instability and subsequent capital flight have a non-insignificant chance of leading to recession, or at least reduced growth. * Those of us who are lucky enough to have the opportunity enjoy the ability to travel and work freely within the EU; and EU citizens in the UK are worried about their future status. * Many firms working within across the EU are worried about complications if the UK does not remain in a free trade zone with the EU. There are already reports of UK startups losing investments and companies who have lost contracts due to the uncertainty. * There's lots of scientific cooperation that sees UK universities receiving considerable research grants from the EU. Even without a squeeze from a poorer economy, there's not much faith that the UK Government will have the same spending priorities. Some of this will become more clear as we move through a negotiation process to exit, but there are a range of unknowns and no clear vision from the Government what a post-EU UK will look like. That causes uncertainty both amongst the people and markets. I'm trying to leave aside the short and medium term domestic and social problems that the referendum has both highlighted and bought about, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that they're just as pressing as the exit negotiations themselves.

ocfx 10y ago

It's not terrible for Britain. Britain will actually gain in the long run over this as the US will broker better deals with Britain than the EU could arrange. They will save a ton of money on money they have to give the EU every year as well. The majority of Brit's spoke up and decided they wanted out. If people didn't want to honor the vote why have it in the first place? The thing is that most of the uproar you see from people is from people who either are not old enough to vote or didn't go vote at all. The rest is just the media pandering to liberal sentiment since it's en vogue.