Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Britain leaves EU, Cameron quits

The people have spoken — and they’ve said, “No” to globalization and “Yes” to an independent United Kingdom.

Britain voted to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign, toppling the government Friday and causing Prime Minister David Cameron to resign. The decision sent global markets plunging.

The decision launches a yearslong process to renegotiate trade, business and political links between the United Kingdom and what would become a 27-nation bloc, an unprecedented divorce that could take decades to complete.

“The dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom,” said Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K. Independence Party. “Let June 23 go down in our history as our independence day!”

Prime Minister David Cameron, who had led the campaign to keep Britain in the EU, said he would resign by October and left it to his successor to decide when to invoke Article 50, which triggers a departure from European Union.

“I will do everything I can as prime minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months,” he said, “but I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers the country to its next destination.”

The electoral commission said 52 percent of voters opted to leave the EU. Turnout was high: 72 percent of the more than 46 million registered voters cast ballots.

Polls ahead of the vote had shown a close race, but the momentum had increasingly appeared to be on the “remain” side over the last week. The result shocked investors, and stock markets plummeted around the world, with key indexes dropping 10 percent in Germany and about 8 percent in Japan and Britain.

The euro fell against the dollar and the pound dropped to its lowest level since 1985, plunging more than 10 percent from about $1.50 to $1.35 before a slight recovery, on concerns that severing ties with the single market will hurt the U.K. economy and undermine London’s position as a global financial center. Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney sought to reassure the markets.

“We are well prepared for this,” Carney said. “The Treasury and the Bank of England have engaged in extensive contingency planning. … We have taken all the necessary steps to prepare for today’s events.”

Also seeking to calm frayed nerves was the most prominent “leave” campaigner, Boris Johnson. Taking a somber tone unusual for the flamboyant former London mayor, he said the result in no way meant the United Kingdom would be “less united” or “less European.”

Even as he spoke, however, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said a second Scottish referendum on independence from the United Kingdom “has to be on the table.” Scotland voted in 2014 to remain a part of the U.K. but leaders said afterward that was conditional on Britain remaining in the EU.

The U.K. would be the first major country to leave the EU, which was born from the ashes of World War II as European leaders sought to build links and avert future hostility. With no precedent, the impact on the single market of 500 million people — the world’s largest economy — is unclear.

Already, far-right leaders in France and the Netherlands were calling for a similar anti-EU vote.

The referendum showed Britain to be a sharply divided nation: Strong pro-EU votes in the economic and cultural powerhouse of London and semi-autonomous Scotland were countered by sweeping anti-Establishment sentiment for an exit across the rest of England, from southern seaside towns to rust-belt former industrial powerhouses in the north.

“It’s a vindication of 1,000 years of British democracy,” commuter Jonathan Campbell James declared at the train station in Richmond, southwest London. “From Magna Carta all the way through to now we’ve had a slow evolution of democracy, and this vote has vindicated the maturity and depth of the democracy in our country.”

Cameron called the referendum largely to silence voices to his right, then staked his reputation on keeping Britain in the EU. Former London Mayor Boris Johnson, who is from the same party, was the most prominent supporter of the “leave” campaign and now becomes a leading contender to replace Cameron. The vote also dealt a blow to the main opposition Labour Party, which threw its weight behind the “remain” campaign.

“A lot of people’s grievances are coming out and we have got to start listening to them,” said deputy Labour Party leader John McDonnell.

Indeed, the vote constituted a rebellion against the political, economic and social Establishment.

Farage called the result “a victory for ordinary people against the big banks, big business and big politics.”

Donald Trump praised the decision during a visit to one of his golf courses in Scotland, saying Britons “took back their country. It’s a great thing.” He likened the vote to the U.S. sentiment that has propelled him to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, saying people in the United States and the United Kingdom are angry about similar things.

“People are angry all over the world,” he said.

After winning a majority in Parliament in the last election, Cameron negotiated a package of reforms that he said would protect Britain’s sovereignty and prevent EU migrants from moving to the U.K. to claim generous public benefits.

Critics charged that those reforms were hollow, leaving Britain at the mercy of bureaucrats in Brussels and doing nothing to stem the tide of European immigrants who have come to the U.K. since the EU expanded eastward in 2004. The “leave” campaign accuses the immigrants of taxing Britain’s housing market, public services and employment rolls.

Those concerns were magnified by the refugee crisis of the past year that saw more than 1 million people from the Middle East and Africa flood into the EU as the continent’s leaders struggled to come up with a unified response.

Cameron’s efforts to find a slogan to counter the “leave” campaign’s emotive “take back control” settled on “Brits don’t quit.” But the appeal to a Churchillian bulldog spirit and stoicism proved too little, too late.

The slaying of pro-Europe lawmaker Jo Cox a week before the vote brought a shocked pause to both campaigns and appeared to shift momentum away from the “leave” camp. While it isn’t clear whether her killer was influenced by the EU debate, her death aroused fears that the referendum had stirred demons it would be difficult to subdue.

The result triggers a new series of negotiations that is expected to last two years or more as Britain and the EU search for a way to separate economies that have become intertwined since the U.K. joined the bloc on Jan. 1, 1973. Until those talks are completed, Britain will remain a member of the EU.

Exiting the EU involves taking the unprecedented step of invoking Article 50 of the EU’s governing treaty. While Greenland left an earlier, more limited version of the bloc in 1985, no country has ever invoked Article 50, so there is no roadmap for how the process will work.

Authorities ranging from the International Monetary Fund to the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have warned that a British exit will reverberate through a world economy that is only slowly recovering from the global economic crisis. The European Union is the world’s biggest economy and the U.K.’s most important trading partner, accounting for 45 percent of exports and 53 percent of imports.

In addition, the complex nature of Britain’s integration with the EU means that breaking up will be hard to do. The negotiations will go far beyond tariffs, including issues such as cross-border security, foreign policy cooperation and a common fisheries policy.

It will also affect the ability of professionals such as investment managers, accountants and lawyers to work in the EU, threatening London’s position as one of the world’s pre-eminent financial centers. The U.K. hosts more headquarters of non-EU firms than Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands put together.

“We believe this outcome has serious implications for the City and many of our clients’ businesses with exposure to the U.K. and the EU,” said Malcolm Sweeting, senior partner of law firm Clifford Chance. “We are working alongside our clients to help them as they anticipate, plan for and manage the challenges the coming political and trade negotiations will bring

I did not realize how long they have been in the EU...

I had to laugh when Cameron said he was going to resign,
Funny how the left can't play well when they don't get their way.
Sounds like some others are going to send it to a vote as well.
Also shows a little of the bias that the current news cycle is running,last night all I seen was how much of a landslide the "in "group had.

no country has ever invoked Article 50, so there is no roadmap for how the process will work.

Well, I suppose Germany will raise a huge army by telling the enlistees they are going to end slavery, then they will invade the UK and grind its economy to dust.

That is what happens when you poll the establishment in London, and disregard the working folks in the outlying areas.
Reality check!

For the record, Cameron is a member of the Conservative party.

So the Brits don't want a distant bureaucracy to run their country.
Reminds me of the 13 colonies vs England also Scotland, Ireland and Wales vs England.

I may have to watch Braveheart again.

David Cameron's idea of Conservative is vastly different to my Idea of Conservative thinking.....

Cameron was spotted at the pool a little while ago......

The funny thing about this vote is it pretty much returns Europe to the place it was towards the end of WW2.
Germany telling everyone else what to do and Great Britian on it's own to go after it.....

British politics works differently than in the US. A reversal on a major issue like this often results in a change of Prime Minister.

It's a shame, because Cameron is the first leader I've ever heard actually admit in public that a country can't keep spending more than it brings in indefinitely.

“If you have maxed out your credit card, if you put off dealing with the problem, the problem gets worse.” (David Cameron, June 2010)

From George Osborne, Cameron's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury Secretary):

"We are going to bring the years of ever rising borrowing to an end. We are going to ensure, like every solvent household in the country, that what we buy, we can afford, that the bills we incur we have the income to meet, and that we do not saddle our children with the interest on the interest on the interest of the debts that we were not prepared, ourselves, to pay."

I'd sure like to hear something like this from an American president. Too bad Cameron isn't eligible.

This is great news! The Europeans are starting to wake up to EU overreach.

What's up with the GB Pound vs the Euro?

I thought countries that were European Union members had to use the Euro as currency.

I do believe that Germany is destined to rule Europe but not with a leader like Merkel. The Continent and free Europe is about gone, the muzzies will rule. It will really be interesting to see if France, Germany, et.al. call for a vote to stay or go. The B.I.S. (the central bankers' bank) is about to schitt over this upset.

This is like Godfather III and International Immobiliare.

The UK kept the pound when they joined. While most use the Euro, some have kept their own currency (UK and Denmark) while others have not converted (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania & Sweden).

Want their cake and eat it too, eh ??

Fook the UK.

Proud member here.
http://www.aoh.com/

That right there might have been the key to the Brexit vote - the Brits aren't losing any bribes such as EU money for roads, schools, welfare, Govt jobs, etc.

The man is conservative and is staying on 'til a successor takes over, he is not taking his ball and going home, he is showing enough class to hold it all in order for the next fellow.

Except for the crying part.

Still, I love the Brits, at least the hard core Brits.