EU referendum: The UK votes to leave the EU

[Kevin]

As called by the BBC

Already we're seeing an impact as the Pound is down 10%. It's going to be a crazy day when the markets open.

As someone looking in from the outside, I wish the UK the best of luck. It's going to be a wild ride and there's so many unanswered questions since no EU member has voted to leave the union before.

For those who've voted to remain or leave, what was the reason for choosing said side?

[Tani Coyote]

Sounds like fears over jobs and immigration are a primary motivator... this sounds eerily similar to American issues with NAFTA. Unfortunately, economists are largely in agreement: economic integration's benefits ultimately outweigh the costs. It's just those who pay the costs (i.e. get laid off) have more of an ability to organize and rally people around the idea integration is bad.

It sounds like Scotland is going to try again for independence in the wake of this. I predict they'll exit this time around, given the narrow margin of victory for the Union last time. This is probably going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

[Patticus]

Trouble's brewing in Ireland: 

That's not going to end well for Britain - either the Troubles will resume, or Britain will lose Northern Ireland to the Republic.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

Can someone give the "For dummies" version of what this is and why it's gonna suck ass for people in the UK?

[PaddyFancy]

14 minutes ago, Patticus said:

Trouble's brewing in Ireland: 

That's not going to end well for Britain - either the Troubles will resume, or Britain will lose Northern Ireland to the Republic.

That's fucking scary. I managed to miss the Troubles and I hope to God they don't come back. As if I'm not in good form about the state of the world already...

[Tani Coyote]

Just now, SenEDtor Missile said:

Can someone give the "For dummies" version of what this is and why it's gonna suck ass for people in the UK?

The European Union has a lot of common market principles going on between its members. Some have the same currency, but there's a lot of relaxed trade restrictions, a customs union, etc. Basically, the EU allows a lot of free movement of labor, goods, and money.

Britain stands to lose some of these benefits from exit. It will have more control over its economy, but it also loses many of the free trade perks that the EU brought, unless it can negotiate a special agreement.

That's to say nothing of the fact it sounds like Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are pretty pro-EU, while England is not. This just might be what breaks the Union apart after hundreds of years.

[Patticus]

The FTSE is set to have £120bn wiped off its value.

Oh Britain, what the ever loving fuck did you just do?

[Tani Coyote]

Now with a map to give you all an idea of how this went.

Wales is very narrowly pro-Leave, as a note. That's consistent with other maps which define it as relatively Europhile.

4 minutes ago, Patticus said:

Oh Britain, what the ever loving fuck did you just do?

It would be more fair to say "Oh England," I think. It looks like this is England's fault for the most part. Northern Ireland and Scotland were against an exit, while Wales' margin of support was very narrow.

I can see why the Scots were so interested in the idea of leaving. Something like this tears it.

[Your Vest Friend]

Hey, I voted in, I'm innocent in this!

[Patticus]

The DOW Jones is looking likely to open in the morning at more than 700 points down. I'm not sure about the financial losses incurred, but I assume that they're likely to be very high.

The fall in the Pound is now bigger than Black Wednesday.

On the plus side, Americans who want a British vacation should be able to do it relatively cheaply, for a short while anyway.

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

Considering that the UK has been anchoring the costs of the EU for years, I'm not too surprised by this. That and the EU has some ridiculous mandates and power that's had some pretty bad effects on certain economic commodities(like this weird one for bananas)

[Tani Coyote]

8 minutes ago, Mando-Whirl-Wind said:

Considering that the UK has been anchoring the costs of the EU for years, I'm not too surprised by this. That and the EU has some ridiculous mandates and power that's had some pretty bad effects on certain economic commodities(like this weird one for bananas)

Integration ultimately pays off, though.

One has to consider externalities. Britain may provide more of the funding, but being part of the EU opens a lot of new markets to any businesses it has that have comparative advantage (i.e. they can produce the good and service more efficiently than others). Consider the case of highways: the government has a net loss on them due to all the labor and materials, but they obviously create a huge amount of commerce that can be taxed, more than paying for the cost of maintenance. It's perfectly fair to provide more of the funding if they garnered more of the benefit, which they very well might have.

It's just economic integration tends to cause unemployment in less efficient sectors (because the country you paired with might produce a good or service more efficiently than you, causing everyone to buy from them, rendering your people in that sector unemployed), so the throngs of newfound-unemployed find it easier to organize and gather support for their cause.

Consider a person who is paid $10 an hour being laid off as a result of a free trade agreement. Say these people make up 1% of the population. Everyone else keeps their jobs, but they now pay $10 less per item that the worker was making. Across a huge chunk of the population, the savings likely outpaces the lost income of the people who are fired. But the savings are minimal enough few of the people who benefit are attached to the idea. On the other hand, the person who lost their job now has plenty of free time to argue about how horrible free trade is for everyone, when it was really only bad for them.

The solution to free trade-created unemployment isn't to villify free trade. It's to invest in retraining programs so the people who are laid off can move into another sector, preferably one that benefited from the free trade. Think of it as becoming the mechanic on the machine that replaced you.

[PaddyFancy]

Whatever happens in Northern Ireland, the one most important thing to me that MUST NOT HAPPEN is violence. If you thought Iraq was bad during and after the Iraq war of 2003, imagine living in the UK with terrorist attacks almost every day on your doorstep. I guess I'm just panicking. The least that'll happen to me is border checks when I cross by bus or train over the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Eurostar has always had like an airport style system. I can live with showing my passport for every cross-border trip. I can't live with daily terrorist attacks like my older generation.

[Spooky Mulder]

14 minutes ago, Fancy said:

Whatever happens in Northern Ireland, the one most important thing to me that MUST NOT HAPPEN is violence. If you thought Iraq was bad during and after the Iraq war of 2003, imagine living in the UK with terrorist attacks almost every day on your doorstep. I guess I'm just panicking. The least that'll happen to me is border checks when I cross by bus or train over the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Eurostar has always had like an airport style system. I can live with showing my passport for every cross-border trip. I can't live with daily terrorist attacks like my older generation.

As bad as it could get, as bad as it's ever been, will be nowhere near as bad as Iraq in 2003.

That said, this is still pretty terrible.

[Jetronic]

Oh god, so that what this tweet I saw earlier was referring to. 2016 keeps getting more and more....not great.

[Tani Coyote]

I do question what Northern Ireland will do.

While it is a Europhile region, it ultimately decided against being part of Ireland due to a variety of longstanding differences (such as religion). So it certainly wouldn't secede to join Ireland like Sinn Fein desires, although I wouldn't be surprised if Republican elements are stirred by this.

I don't know if it feels the same cultural difference Scotland does to secede over this, though. London's very pro-Remain, but I don't think the City of London is going to pursue independence.

[Agie]

I don't entirely understand thins...but I think I understand enough that I'm worried for the future. I only hope the UK gets through this without too much damage.

But as an outsider looking in, I can only hope for the best.

[Phos]

1 hour ago, Raccoonatic Ogilvie said:

Now with a map to give you all an idea of how this went.

Hey, the Falklands don't get a say in this?

But more seriously, a good example I saw brought up was the auto industry. A lot of cars are built in the UK (even though the cars meant for their domestic market have the steering wheel on the wrong side as though they were made for a bunch of nightmare people), and right now the UK defers to the same approval process for approving a car to be sold there, now it's possible that the UK will get its own approval process. On a slightly smaller scale, you also have PEGI being a European creation that the UK also uses. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Ya know, it's kinda funny because as much as I wouldn't have wanted the worst to come, as an outsider looking at it I kinda saw this coming. Given the crises that have been going on and that those wanting to leave kept citing how they didn't have the kind of economic control they wanted, I figured they'd get a slight edge, consequences be damned.

If you ask me, it sounds more like they were looking only at the short term. Think Scotland will succeed in another succession? Things aren't looking too bright, from how it sounds. Sucks that England seems to have the greater pull in the decision.

[Linkabel]

Welp, it seems that NBC and some other outlets are reporting that David Cameron is stepping down as Prime Minister.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Well, given he was against the Brexit, that was to be expected.

Why lead a country going in a direction you strived to avoid, yet had no control over it's decision?

[Candescence]

Congratulations, Cameron, you fucking idiot, you fucked over the UK.

What's gonna happen with Scotland and Northern Ireland is gonna be interesting, I suppose.

[TheBlueGuardian]

Woke up, put the news on, then this happens, I got bad feeling where this is going.

[Teoskaven]

This combined with the news about the fall in pretty much all banks around the world puts my potential future in such a shitty light.

I'm even hesitant to call my UK contact to hear if my future job there is still avaible. Just, how did this actually managed to happen is beyond me.

[The Tenth Doctor]

So people that voted Leave. Did you do it for the NHS? Farage has come out and said he lied about it.

One of his main campaign points. Gone already. Oh dear, we are so screwed. I'm so sorry it's gone this way guys. I am not looking forward to the aftermath on this one. BE SAFE EVERYONE, if we had a riot for the Scottish Independence referendum, I can imagine some rioting over this.