Britain is sailing into a storm with no one at the wheel

Great read, thanks very much

Tack onto this the extreme increase in boldness from SNP - they're no longer taking about just a second referendum, but about negotiating directly with the EU about how Scotland can remain in, and about talks with London.

And the instant demands for a referendum on Northern Ireland.

And the fact that we now have a small but serious (amid a much larger signed-a-petition-for-the-hell-of-it crowd [1]) starting to work towards independence for London - it's too early to tell if it will turn into something lasting, but there are people working on drawing up plans to create an actual political party.

This will be a circus. And it's virtually certain at this point that the UK will no longer be united in 5 years time. The question now is whether it'll be just Scotland that leaves, or if Northern Ireland and Gibraltar will follow.

London won't happen anytime soon - most of those signing the petition for London independence will have forgotten about it in days -, but expect substantial further devolution to all the major cities over the coming years to try to prevent such movements from actually gaining traction.

Westminster will have the choice between being left stripped of power or stripped of land.

This referendum will be remembered as the start pistol for the dismantling of the UK.

[1] https://www.change.org/p/sadiq-khan-declare-london-independe...

Except Cameron greatly weakened the uk by resorting to printing through land.

> and order Britain to honor its obligations as an EU member apart from immigration.

Free movement of EU-citizens is a core obligation in the EU. You can't honor all other obligations without honoring this one. The ironic twist is that for people from new EU member states, there is a transitional phase where movement and work permits can be restricted and the UK explicitly opted out in the case of Poland, because at that time they were in dire need of cheap labor - and now they're complaining.

In any case, there's no question at the moment if the UK needs to honor all EU membership obligations: Until the UK government decides to invoke the exit clause, the UK is a full member with all privileges and all obligations - and it seem they're not in a rush to do so. However, I fully expect them to be sidelined in all upcoming negotiations, especially the ones that don't require an unanimous vote. They've already thrown away the improvements that Cameron negotiated in February, those were under reserve of not leaving the EU.

Fun times ahead, for sure.

She could maybe do something like that, but it would probably mean the end of the Royal family, who do have power but are arguably only allowed to have power on the strict understanding they don't use it.

The last thing we need is the chaos of the Royals becoming mixed up in all of this.

[Edit: I'm a very mild republican - but I'd be happiest if the Royals decided for themselves that the current state of affairs is a bit silly and they decided to do something else. Also if the alternative is an elected political president as HoS then I'll keep the Royals.]

Is a complex situation. The "United States of Europe" idea is basically oppossite and a menace to european monarchies. Some of the more reluctant countries to adopt the euro have kings or queens; and maybe this played a role in the brexit. In the current big plans for the eurozone, European kings will become quickly useless. (Why would be necessary to keep such thing like a "King of Alabama" or a "Queen of New York"?). The Queen of England probably knows it, and wouldn't be much excited with the idea of helping the same european burocrats that would be glad later to menace her power.

Ya'all misunderstand. the problem - and OP's post theory - is the leadership vacuum that exists is one that threatens the United Kingdom. This is why you keep a constitutional monarchy around, a safeguard for times like this. If I'm certain of anything, it is that the EU will look aside as Britain enacts immigration reforms, because the alternative is the demise of the EU and the ascension of Russia as the center of gravity in Europe. The only other possibility is a shock and awe meeting of NATO countries to offer cohesion. This is a real crisis.

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.

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?"

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.

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.

> 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.

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

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-...

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".

Cameron leaving was a poison pill - whichever idiot takes over as Tory leader will be faced with having this blitheringly stupid idea attached to their name forever, or torpedoing themselves out the gate by not going forward with it.

(What will actually happen is some glib fool will come forward who actually thinks it's a good idea. They're not short on those.)

But what's the alternative? Without a government of national unity, stepping up to become prime minister doesn't look like a smart career move at all. I see this eventually (but hopefully soon) going to elections.

I guess the best (or rather, least bad) possible follow-up would be that some parties put "we won't follow the outcome of the referendum" as #1 issue in their campaign, with those parties getting a decent majority (2/3 or more) of votes that way. That would be bad for the UK (they would lose negotiation power with the EU, as their continuous threat of leaving would have lost credibility), but probably not as bad as Scotland breaking of the UK.

An alternative would be to have new parties pop up playing the "we won't leave" card, and getting reasonable support. That is unlikely in Britain's first past the post system, though.

And of course, for both options, it probably must go bad for the UK soon for large amounts of pro-brexit voters to change their minds.

Edit: reading http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/i-cannot-stress-t..., it seems Boris is maneuvering to get the PM post in such a way it won't be poisonous for him. I don't see how the EU would accept the "we are leaving, but want to keep all the table silver" kind of divorce that he is advocating, though. Yes, as Switzerland and Norway show, you can get some of the EU niceties without being part of the EU, but that doesn't mean you can cherry-pick what you want (for example, Switzerland is fairly tied to the EU https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland–European_Union_r...)

Care to comment on this article specifically, or are we now reduced to simply throwing out hollow partisan platitudes?

I see it more as the right finally being able to put together a coherent identity politics strategy. I think it has little to do with the ideology much to do with strategy.