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What Happens Brex’t?
Global financial panic, Sterling collapsing, and Scotland — possibly Northern Ireland, too — apt to break away. Quite a day’s work.
A striking aspect of the results is the extent to which the vote represents a victory of the old over the young. “Young voters wanted Brexit the least,” as the Mirror put it, “and will have to live with it the longest.”
The final YouGov poll before the referendum showed 72% of 18 to 24-year-olds backed a Remain vote – with just 19% backing Brexit.
Brexiters were led to victory in the referendum overnight by triumphing in Tory shires and Old Labour heartlands in Wales and the north of England.
But the Kingdom is no longer United after London, Scotland and Northern Ireland all backed Remain.
The more damaging legacy, however, could be the staggering difference in how people of different ages [voted].
The final YouGov poll before the referendum showed 72% of 18 to 24-year-olds backed a Remain vote – with just 19% backing Brexit.
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: “Young people voted to remain by a considerable margin, but were outvoted. They were voting for their future, yet it has been taken from them.”
I hope that the optimists are proven right and that this is the first day of a bright new future for Britain and Europe. But unless it is — and unless the gain that justifies the pain comes sooner, rather than later — Britain (or what’s left of it) will experience an unprecedented generational war. Or at least, I’m racking my mind, and I can’t think of a precedent, can you?
Adam Newman@NewmanDipFa I’m so angry. A generation given everything: Free education, golden pensions, social mobility have voted to strip my generation’s future.
The pain will certainly be acute in the immediate term.
Now we’ll watch Europe’s biggest divorce case since Henry VIII. I posted this a few months ago, but it’s worth dusting off and watching again. This is from Open Europe’s simulation post-Brexit negotiations. Former Chancellor Norman Lamont is playing the role of the UK:
As someone who wishes Britain and Europe well, I hope very much that Britain withdraws in an orderly way and recovers as quickly as possible, leaving behind a Europe that’s better for the experience. I hope the rest of the EU learns and benefits from crisis and failure. And if it neither learns nor survives, I hope Europe’s reversion to a gaggle of fractious, quarreling states goes better than history would indicate.
Whatever happens, I’ll report. If you make a contribution this week, it will be earmarked for a chapter of Brave New World about Brexit and its consequences. Please contribute! This story is getting more and more interesting by the day — but I’m still well away from the goal.
Large change in stock prices or rates of exchanges do not represent real losses or gains in wealth (except for a few lucky or unlucky individuals). They only reflect expectations about the future and almost always the panic that usually follows an unforeseen dramatic event gives way to calm reflection. In fact, whether things from now on go well or badly is largely a question of how rational the response of the leaders of the EU is going to be, i.e. will they choose to cause huge damage to their own countries to punish Britain? Today Frau Merkel spoke about the need for close relations with the UK in the future and Donald Tusk suggested that the EU itself needs a fundmental reform. So on the whole I am rather optimistic.
The day before the referendum I wrote a semi-autobiographical essay on Brexit: http://www.mimuw.edu.pl/~akoz/History/BrexitAndMe.pdf
I would be very interested in any comments.
Well put. You are exactly right.
I was just watching this demographic breakdown of the vote on SkyNews. Young vs Old, City vs Country and, of course, the Degreed vs Everyone else.
They are facts but meaningless ones. There is no wisdom in youth. There is not even wisdom behind a degree. Increasingly it’s a merely an accreditation from other socialists that you’ve been sufficiently indoctrinated.
Brexit is a symptom of the problems in Europe, not the cause. Britain as the least Europhile large economy is a warning to those who wish to Remain, whatever their country.
So an open door to millions of migrants, but the Gendarmerie is going to hunt you down for deportation?
Perhaps taking a deep breath would be appropriate at this time.
Only from the perspective of Royalist twits…
In listening the sincere arguments for Remain I am struck overwhelmingly by the common fear of the unknown. I am referring to sincere arguments, not bad-faith ones. I have also noticed that women more than men seem to fear the unknown of Brexit.
Welcome to Ricochet Professor Kozlowski.
The day after Brexit the British stock marker is the best performing European stock market today.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2016/06/23/20160624_EU1_0.jpg
I wonder what the discussion and panic would be if, say Texas were to have a plebiscite vote that mandated its leaders to negotiate an exit from the United States. And why not? We know that forcible secession once lead to a nasty war, but what about a negotiated exit? That is what the UK is doing, in’t it? Would a negotiated exit actually rain chaos upon Texas?
I don’t know enough about the EU to know whether the UK has the right to exit without an negotiated agreement. I wonder what happens if an agreement cannot be reached.
It’s like a national day of mourning here in Ireland.
From my own point of view I’m puzzled at all this talk of economic instability. We’re still in the throes of the huge economic shock caused by the eurozone crisis, when the States poorly suited to low interest rates saw their economies collapse. It’s not so long since there was talk of countries printing their own currencies.
Of course a lot of the wounds were self-inflicted but the inability to control interest rates played a large part.
Yes.
Claire, I don’t see the logic to your argument, or the facts to support it. First of all, the only ones who’ve been leaving the UK for Europe in numbers are the retired for Spanish retirement villas. Spain will still want their money. The flow of the young has been into Britain. The EU has been metastasizing regulations. That kills economies. With the Tories in power there is a very strong likelihood that the UK will lighten the regulatory burdens, both in the City and for industry throughout the UK. That will cause an economic bloom. It will take very little for Great Britain to be an economic magnet for Europe, only now it will control its destiny. It may be that Dublin will get some benefit from this as a bridge between EU/the Anglosphere. But that will not be at London’s expense. More likely at the expense of Paris or Frankfurt or Brussels.
I have always thought that this was a significant factor separating American colonists from the British remainers when America was colonized, a spirit that did not fear the unknown.
Claire’s words here remind me very much of our US ruling class who are constantly exhorting us to turn more and more control and power over to Washington. It is revealing.
You were drawn to a place that has restrictionist immigration policies. Sounds like an endorsement of Trumpism.
I agree with all of that except this: the crash is not completely over. My prediction, based on all the vasty data I have in rectalis storage, is that the (US) markets–DJIA–will lose another 1,000-1,500 points over the course of next week before Baron Rothschild’s wisdom gets reasserted, followed by an actual return to normal behavior.
Eric Hines
Are you not working?
Uh the North forced that war on the Confederacy. The legislatures, the elected representatives of the citizens of the various states voted to leave.
Edit- Not sure what happened- But my comment was on page 4.
http://ricochet.com/what-happens-brext/comment-page-4/#comment-3383011
Dudes, no credit for saying it first?
Funny, I’m led to believe, “I don’t recognize this country anymore,” was one of the main drivers behind the Leave vote.
Funny, I feel that way every morning in Obama’s America.
Not necessarily. The principles underlying the Declaration of Indpendence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution were derived from political theories and beliefs that had been circulating in the English-speaking world for quite some time. And in the preamble of the Constitution, the framers made it clear they were securing the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, not the entire world.
Britain is the world’s fifth largest economy. Within the EU only Germany outranks them, though France is #6. Trade is reciprocal; cutting off Britain in a fit of pique would be just as devastating to Europe and its members as it would be to Britain. The Eurocrats talk a big game, but they know better.
Obama speaking. Seems to have put his petulance aside and is channeling his inner grown up.
A pleasant surprise. I feared a lecture from a disappointed tutor.
I still suspect that both votes are driven by anti-English sentiment more than anything else.
I didn’t realize Obama had an inner grown up.
Tim Stanley pointed out that the “young” who voted “remain” in the EEC in 1975 were the mature voters today who voted Brexit. I suspect that because the international wheels grind slowly, the big loser is the EP, not what used to be the EEC. Britain will be like it has always been, just a bit more, as well as having license to thumb its nose at the ECB and ECJ when such thumbing is richly deserved. The question, as you say, is whether the French and German technocrats will gain any insight, especially as the FRG still deals with the Euro problem.
It would be the ultimate in cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Also: we were founded on a proposition, not as a propositional nation. That proposition is that all men are created equal and that these men are sovereign, not government (those political theories).
Eric Hines