A disaster for the UK. It is not even 12 hours since the result and what has happened.
Sterling heading south at a speed of knots. The biggest daily loss since 1985. The UK runs a serious current account deficit and this fall will even impact further on it.The drastic fall in value has already knocked the UK off its perch as the fifth biggest trading nation as values are calculated in USD.
Scotland are looking for another referendum and rightly so. The Scots by a large majority voted to want to be part of the EU.
Northern Ireland now talking about a referendum on unification. Probably will not happen but they did vote to remain.
Prime Minister has resigned. We are now going to have a dog fight within the Tory party. So much for democracy when the next PM to lead the exit negotiations will be selected by 150,000 Tory party members.
The Labour party in total disarray. No effective opposition. A leader who did more damage to the remain campaign than Osbourne did.
Rating agencies talking about a 2 notch downgrade. Borrowing costs will increase. This could impact seriously on whether the UK is a place to invest in. Forecasts are expecting house prices to fall by an average of £60k. If this was to happen we would be back in the negative equity problems again.
Farage now saying that the £350 million a week that will be spent on the NHS will not happen. His view is now that it was a mistake by the leave campaign to say it would.
My own personal view, irrelevant of what side would have won, is that I believe that this referendum has caused serious damage that will take a long time for the wounds to heal.
There are a number of things that I always considered the UK to have more than any other country in the world:
Tolerance to listen and understand others points of view. There were so many lies and untruths by both sides.
Fairness in treating people and not influenced by colour or creed. This was blown away when immigrants were blamed for all the ills in society. Listening today to some people and what they were saying was getting on being racist. The Turks came in for the worst of it. The issue is that the problems are caused by successive governments (Labour and Tory) not properly investing in infrastructure. I believe many people were not voting on the EU but as a cry for help. Politics and politicians have becom e so remote from normal working people. My worry is that it will be those people who may finish up paying the price. 6 years on from the last recession and the economy has had only sporadic recovery. Living in the South East all is bright but that is not the case in places like the Welsh valleys. Listening to some workers from Nissan and they were very concerned about job security and the impact it will have on future investment. They were worried that Nissan may move future projects to other places.
I believe that we could become very isolationist and that we think that we can pull up the drawbridge and live happily ever after. This is my biggest gripe with the leave side. Not once during the referendum did they actually give a vision of the future outside the EU. All I heard was we will have favourable trade agreements and the EU want us more than we want them. We will be able to trade with India, China and the US. The governments of these nations stated they would prefer one agreement with the EU rather than negotiate with individual nations. It was surprising that 74% of a sample of leavers did not want to leave the single market but wanted a Norway style membership. Even the Norwegians feel that is the worst of both worlds.
At the end of all this not only will we leave the EU we could also see the end of the UK as it is today.