Last night I fell asleep at 1:30 and everyone was claiming ‘Remain” was at 54% and Brexit at 48%. This morning this ⇒ 51.9% for Exit and 48.9% for Remain. A shock! A shock for Europe and the European Union leaders, first of all.
- A serious even dramatic moment, especially for the UK
- On behalf of all 27 leaders: We are determined to keep our unity as 27
- I will also propose to leaders that we start a wider reflection on the future of our Union
#euco
German Vice Chancellor @sigmargabriel 3 hours ago
Damn! Ein schlechter Tag für Europa. #EUref
Damm it! A bad day for Europe
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that “EU must remain united” and went to hide his head in the sand.
And certainly a shock for David Cameron who announced his resignation one and a half hour after the official announcement of the Referendum result. He said though that he will remain in the PM post until October and let the next government to pull the trigger of the Brexit procedures.
Cameron said also that they will be no changes for EU citizens living in UK – at least not for now.
The Brexit Referendum may soon trigger another referendum as majority of votes in Scotland and Northern Ireland do indeed want to remain in the EU.
Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister calls for poll on united Ireland after Brexit,
Geographical breakdown of how the UK has voted in the #EUref 
The Brexit is expected to boost anti-EU forces around Europe
via @IanWishart – Bloomberg
I cannot tell whether the 51.9% who voted for Brexit were endorsing Farage’s anti-migrant policies. They certainly sent a strong message to this EU that has been taken over by neo-liberals who violently and without scruple crash people’s lives. It’s maybe the anger that won.
I cannot even help to dare suspect that the British Euroscepticism has also lots to do with the way the EU treated Greece in the last 6 years and especially in 2015.
What I have realized running this website and blog since 2010, is that the best supporters of Greece have always been the British people.
I cannot write now about the economic consequences of the Brexit, but the euro collapsed against the dollar, two hours after the results announcement, it slumped 3.3%, suffering its worst fall ever.
The Bank of England promised to safeguard financial stability, BoE governor Mark Carney said he will provide £250 billion to support the UK markets – the banks – as pound dips to 30-year-low.
That’s the good thing when a state has its own currency.
Will the EU be able to realize the damage and the wrong policies that led Britons to such decisions?
I hardly believe that. Unless more and more European folks reject EU in referendum. For sure, there is some kind of panic in Brussels, that reportedly will try to conclude the Brexit procedures as soon as it can be possible to discourage a hazardous domino effect.
Holy shit, they replaced David Cameron with a cat.
How could UK’s pollsters be so wrong in the last 24 hours and in the so-called exit polls? They probably suffered under the same “elites-syndrome” as their Greek colleagues in the 2015 Referendum.
Nevertheless, I think, it was a brave decision, then it needs real guts to take such great risks. Even though, I don’t know, how the result would be had United Kingdom be a member of the eurozone.
I just feel sad for all the Britons living in Greece.
Tsipras silent…
Three hours after the Brxit results and there is still no reaction by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
Mean Greeks claim on social media, that Tsipras is hanging on the phone with Cameron explaining to him how to turn the Brexit into Bremain.
PS at the end of the day, I’m afraid only Greece and Germany will remain in the EU…
A sad day, yet it might be chance the chance for not just deeper but the right integration. Starting with what the EU needs most, a healthy dose of democratization, meaning enhanced powers for the Parliament, a directly elected commission and the use of european wide referenda, all things a british government wouldve blocked.
As for :”How could UK’s pollsters be so wrong in the last 24 hours and in the so-called exit polls? They probably suffered under the same “elites-syndrome” as their Greek colleagues in the 2015 Referendum.”
They werent that wrong in the actual polls, most of them showed a toss up sometimes a lead for leave sometimes for remain.
Exit polls for this, as any serious pollster wouldve said, are basically useless because there was no previous data/elections to compare to and the leave/remain camps didnt vote along party lines.
but polls yesterday were showing Remain to lead with 6%
If youre talking about exit polls, like I said those have no chance of being reliable because there is no previous data to compare to.
First thing I find on google is this
https://ig.ft.com/sites/brexit-polling/
and those almost all show the answers to be in the margin of error.
Btw. unlike last years election the bookkeepers got it wrong this time.
thanks
I congratulate Britains. Democracy requires sovereignty.
How could polls go that wrong? This is a misplaced question. Statistical methods establishes:
Your accuracy also depends on the percentage of your sample that picks a particular answer. If 99% of your sample said “Yes” and 1% said “No,” the chances of error are remote, irrespective of sample size. However, if the percentages are 51% and 49% the chances of error are much greater. It is easier to be sure of extreme answers than of middle-of-the-road ones.
What can be done to avoid surprises? Get huge sample size (very expensive), enlarge the confidence interval, making the uncertainty of the outcome big – and refrain from bold statements.
Above quote was taken from surveysystem. Search keywords were “online sample size calculator”.
The sad thing about the Brexit vote is that the second rate politicians (Juncker, Schultz, Tusk, Diesel-Bomb, etc.) running Europe today continue to be stone deaf to the fact that their technocratic way of running the show with utter disdain for the democratic process is actually what is leading Europe over the edge. If Euroscepticism is on the rise all over Europe today it has a lot to do with the fact these non-entities have both nothing to offer beyond a reader dose of the same and have shown a savage desire to punish, or at least totally ignore, those who refuse to believe their bland platitudes. Unfortunately, I don’t think they’ve gotten the message.
from what I ‘ve heard so far today, no, they didn’t. or they still try to save face
KTG-
The usual suspects in the EU oligarchy cannot get the message. First off, they are totally incapable of admitting to any error, no matter how slight. Have they ever admitted to, no less taken ownership of the grossly inaccurate forecasts for unemployment and GDP contraction arising from Greece’s first five years of their austerity program? Have they ever admitted that they were horribly slow in doing anything about the refugee/migrant situation that they declared a “crisis” in 2013 and then sat on their hands?
–
Following a setback such as this, a competent leader would begin by asking, “Could I have done anything differently to prevent this from happening?” Rather, the EU oligarchs are simply acting as if the people of the UK are somehow misguided, and those people will have to accept the pain of their decision. I doubt that Juncker, Schultz, Schauble, Diesel-Bloomers et. al. understand that truly democratic governments rule only by the consent of the people. Rather, they subscribe to the age old German notion that the people are subservient to the government.
–
I have little confidence that the EU oligarchs will learn anything from this setback.
it was my wishful thinking this morning –
While acknowledging that they have nominally left, our “fearless leaders” are quite capable of offering additional perks and compromises to England in order to entice them to stay for all intents and purposes. Stupid? Yes. But stupidity for short term gains has never stopped the Junckers, Dusks, and Barrosos of the world. And case in point…here is an editorial in Le Monde of this morning:
“L’agitation et la spéculation sur les marchés, les déclarations à l’emporte pièce vont agiter l’opinion pendant quelques jours, voire quelques semaines.
A celui qui décrira le mieux la descente aux enfers.
Puis les réalistes vont reprendre le dessus. En Angleterre, les vainqueurs n’ont pas intérêt à un ralentissement brutal des échanges et de la croissance en Europe. Il en est de même sur le continent. Les diplomates vont se mettre au travail et les diplomates britanniques sont excellents. Des compromis vont s’esquisser. On inventera un dispositif à la norvégienne ou à la Suisse. A Londres, les provocations ne seront plus de mise. Les Européens installés dans le Royaume-Uni seront rassurés. Des périodes de transition seront aménagés. Et si les intérêts économiques ne suffisaient pas, l’influence de pays conservateurs, comme l’Allemagne ou les Pays-Bas, qui veulent éviter un éloignement trop marqué entre la Grande Bretagne et le continent, jouera dans le sens du compromis et de l’apaisement. La France n’a pas d’autre choix que de chercher l’apaisement. Certes, les dégâts sont inévitables, surtout si la baisse de la Livre est durable, mais ce ne sera pas la catastrophe.”
are we reading French here now?
Sorry. Are we limiting ourselves to what English speakers have to say about the world? Would you like me to translate?
no, we are not limiting ourselves, it is language barriers doing it
Here you are:
“Market jitters and speculation and sweeping statements will rile public opinion for a few days or even a few weeks.
It will be up to who will best describe England’s inevitable descent into hell.
But eventually pragmatism will take over. In England, there is no interest in provoking a sharp slowdown in trade and growth in Europe. The same is true on the continent. Eventually, diplomats will get to work and we all know that British diplomats are excellent. Compromises will begin to take shape. A mechanism will be invented for England similar to those already in place for Norway or Switzerland. In London, incitements against Europe will no longer be the order of the day. Europeans living in the UK will be reassured about the future. Transition periods will be decided and put in place. And if economic interests were not enough to secure a compromise, the influence of conservative countries like Germany or the Netherlands, who want to avoid a marked estrangement between Britain and the continent, will push matters towards compromise and appeasement. In this, France has no choice but to seek appeasement. True, some damages are bound to happen, especially if there is a lasting decline in the value of the pound, but it will not be the disaster everyone is predicting.”
thanks for the translation . it sounds so romantic -diplomatic.
Well like you said, difference in languages and language barriers… French writing conventions are quite different from the English ones. Where foreigners tend to see writing in French being predominantly preoccupied with linguistic artistry (who you call the “romantic” turn of phrase), the French themselves value clarity and aesthetic elegance as much as argumentation and analysis. Likewise, French can sounds formal and pompous to non-French speakers while in fact it is simply a way to stay polite and impersonal.
ok oit was worth reading Le monde diplomatique right?
No. La Tribune: http://www.latribune.fr/opinions/blogs/generation-deuxieme-gauche/brexit-une-cecite-britannique-contagieuse-581874.html
merci
This all is wishful thinking. There is no way to join in a single system “deeper integration” and horrendous trade surplus of Germany and Netherlands of 10%, against other Eurozone countries
“Democracy requires sovereignty.” What a GREAT quote.
I have to admit I was surprised that the ‘leave’ vote won the day, even though I know a good many Brits were sick of the democratic deficit that runs through the very heart of the EU and the fact that their own government, who they vote for, can’t do anything without the approval of their unelected masters in Brussels.
The reason I was surprised was because the ‘remain’ camp has been trying to scare people into voting to stay in the EU by telling them that if we leave, the sky will fall on our heads, there will be floods, famine and plagues of locusts, and that the island nation will sink into the sea and be lost without a trace. So good for the Brits for resisting the EU propaganda and voting out, regardless.
There was a good article in the Irish Times about what the ramifications of Brexit would be for Ireland, and the author of the article made a very telling point about the current state of politics in Europe:
“It was evident from the campaign that the gulf between many ordinary British people and their political leaders and institutions is immense. During the campaign, polling suggested that almost half of all leave voters expected that the result would be fixed by the remain-dominated establishment.
This suggests that a huge chunk of the British population believes they are being governed without their consent: think about that for a minute.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/what-does-brexit-nightmare-mean-for-ireland-1.2697702
And thereby lies the problem with the EU. The peoples of Europe are being governed by an unaccountable, unelected cabal without their consent. And not only are these faceless technocrats unelected and unaccountable, but they live in a parallel universe where the needs and wishes of the populace are secondary to ‘Le Grand Projet’. Nothing must stand in the way of their socialist dream of the utopian Federal Europe.
As Orwell said in ‘Animal Farm’ – “Animals are all equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
this being governed by faceless & non-elected technocrats is a problem for many EU-citizens.
As a ‘Brit’ who voted ‘Leave’ I was surprised we won. The last poll yesterday called it for ‘Remain’ so I went to bed depressed ! And what a morning !! The bells should have pealled in celebration !
In the cold light of day ‘Remains’ threats that economic collapse and World War III would start three weeks next Tuesday became the butt of jokes. The scare tactics just didn’t work. So where was the positive vision of membership of the EU, which many of us have noticed has reduced Greece to penury ? There wasn’t one.