Among British voters who supported Brexit, there were probably quite a number who upon seeing the news on Friday morning concluded: That’s it! Britain is out of the EU.

To understand why the withdrawal process will in fact be “a complex and daunting task,” it’s necessary to dig into some of the legal details of the process.

On March 8, The Select Committee on the European Union in the House of Lords, sought evidence from two experts in the field of EU law: Sir David Edward KCMG, QC, PC, FRSE, a former Judge of the Court of Justice of the European Union and Professor Emeritus at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh; and Professor Derrick Wyatt QC, Emeritus Professor of Law, Oxford University, and also of Brick Court Chambers.

What follows are some excerpts from their public testimony. Questions came from members of the Committee.

Professor Derrick Wyatt: … with respect to the fate of EU legislation, we tend to look at it as legislation that is imposed upon us. That is not accurate. Part of the way that British Governments have successively exercised their policies has been through the machinery of the European Union. If we look at legislation on equality in the workplace or on the environment, or we look at our company law, these are not all alien mechanisms to our detriment that have been forced upon us. Many of them are pieces of legislation that are regarded as currently important and still receive strong support. It would take years for Government and Parliament properly to review the corpus of European law, jettison what was not wanted and keep what would be wanted — in my view, the majority.

Professor Derrick Wyatt: Greenland shows that even mildly complicated issues can take quite a long time. The population of Greenland is 55,000. Its issues are mainly around fishing, and transitional rules took two years to negotiate. [A referendum in 1982 led Greenland to withdraw from the EEC, a process completed in 1985.]

Professor Derrick Wyatt: The Open Europe think tank recently published some comparative information on how long it takes to negotiate various types of agreement. Agreements negotiated by the EU were taking between four and seven years. If one looks at agreements negotiated by countries between themselves outside the EU, they seem to take between four and nine years. All that shows one is that these things can take a long time.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: I am not clear on the position of the UK with regard to the day-to-day business of the EU going forward. While all this negotiation is going on, it will be getting on with other things. What is the status of the UK during that period, which could be up to a decade?

Sir David Edward: The UK remains a member state. Strictly speaking, we become chairman of the Council. We have the presidency of the Council in 2017. Strictly speaking, it just continues.

Professor Derrick Wyatt: Under the trio system, every presidency acts in conjunction with the next two in line. A few days after the Brexit referendum the UK would join the trio, with Slovakia and Malta. What does the trio do? Forward planning and continuity. We would be in that trio, we would be in the next trio and then we would have the presidency. Forward planning and continuity would be weaknesses for the UK. On the other hand, there would be some issues we would want to stay in on: for example, common foreign and security policy and sanctions against rogue states. The UK has an enormous influence, and our interests are served by that. We would not want to disengage politically from decisions such as that. Suppose there were a meeting on duties on imports of dumped Chinese steel. The UK would want to be involved with that.

Lord Whitty: But is it up to the UK?

Professor Derrick Wyatt: Yes, it would be up to the UK, but the UK would have to work hard to maintain political credibility. The other side of that would be some selective disengagement, because where it was not working the UK would have to say, “We can understand why this bit won’t work and we are not trying to undermine this organisation”.

Lord Borwick: What are the legal implications if, as you say, the withdrawal negotiations take more than two years, as we all expect they would, and no extension is given? It has to be given unanimously [by all 27 member states], as I understand it. I am not sure what the incentive is for all the other states to agree to that extension?

Professor Derrick Wyatt: It is £8 billion a year in net contributions, and access to the UK market for workers and for motor cars. All the member states in the EU believe they benefit from the internal market. They will continue to believe that and there will be a minor budgetary crisis the day that the UK financial net contribution ceases. I am not saying that people always act according to their best interests if their blood is up. This would be one of the huge risks. If, for example, the UK were to jump the gun and insist on imposing unilateral restrictions on immigration while negotiations were going on, the climate would disintegrate. We would not be able to carry on in the spirit of considered mutual self-interest.

Lord Borwick: I entirely agree with you, but as far as a lot of voters are concerned, after a decision on Brexit has been made, they will believe that is the point at which Brexit takes place. They will not understand the details of Article 50 or the two years, let alone the other implications that you have brought forward. Will they not demand some instant withdrawal politically?

Professor Derrick Wyatt: I do not think it is feasible for politicians now to have a plan B, but it is essential that our Civil Service has a procedural plan B. I put my cards on the table. I shall vote to remain. I am not wishing for this to happen. If it does happen, we shall all be in the same boat and there will be huge national self-interest in moving forward in a very considered way without jumping the gun in directions that could torpedo the negotiations before they start. There will be a major learning curve for some politicians, obviously — present company excepted — and the electorate as to what needs to be done to achieve British self-interest. This is not a question of concessions to others; it is how we achieve what we would want to achieve. I agree that the man or woman in the street might expect, on the day we vote out, that with one bound we are free.

Lord Borwick: Yes, together with the newspapers, the television and others. The first time that a directive comes through with which we disagree and on which we have had no comment but which we will be bound with, there will be a really big row, one presumes.

Professor Derrick Wyatt: That is where the trick will be such a hard one — forging political consensus across the parties to move forward in a way that serves our best interests.

Lord Borwick: As you said, there has to be political consensus across the parties, including presumably the SNP [Scottish National Party], which has a different interest in this matter.

Professor Derrick Wyatt: Yes, but there will be the same interest in what the SNP might say is the short to medium term, because it has aspirations to leave the UK in the longer term.

Sir David Edward: I go back to about a month ago when I was giving a lecture in Germany organised jointly by a university and the German-British Friendship Society of that particular province or Land. The chairman of the German-British Friendship Society said, “Make no mistake about it: if there is a vote to leave, it will be a very, very nasty divorce”.

The Chairman [Lord Boswell]: There is a follow-up point — forgive us — which is the question of acquired rights under EU law. In a sense, trade might be simple because there is a machinery. I am not aware of any machinery for safeguarding acquired rights. Do either of you have a comment on that?

Sir David Edward: Could I give you some examples of what would need to be negotiated? A businessman in two different member states has a contract for the supply of components at a fixed price over a period of years that extends beyond the two-year period. What happens if there is an immediate exit? Is customs duty then payable and does that disrupt the contract? What are the consequences? A university has an EU research funding package with provision for cross-frontier movement of research scientists, and that has a life beyond two years. What happens to that? What happens to Erasmus students? When does participation in Erasmus end? A divorced couple live in the UK and another member state with special arrangements for access to children, and particularly cross-border payment of family maintenance. What happens to that? There are cross-border investments and tax treatment of capital and revenue. There are agricultural support payments and fishing quotas. Those are just examples.

Lord Mawson: Has anyone considered practically, given the process you are describing, how many zeros there will be on the legal bill for all of this?

Sir David Edward: I echo the feeling of one of my contemporaries, an EU lawyer, who said, “I thank God for my mortality”. The long-term ghastliness of the legal complications is almost unimaginable. Certainly, there will be people who will make a great deal of money out of it.

Lord Davies of Stamford: Do you think that the Government’s assessment of the risks, uncertainties and potential costs of withdrawal are overstated, understated or reasonably stated?

Sir David Edward: I think potentially they are understated. You should be apprehensive.

Professor Derrick Wyatt: I prefer not to comment on the Government’s proposals. In the Government’s White Paper, they say a number of things, but I would rather confine myself to specific issues. On the specific issues, it seems to me that there is a considerable level of uncertainty and the immediate effect of Brexit would be that the pound would go down, the Stock Exchange would go down and the cost of public sector borrowing would go up, which is why the Bank of England at the moment is making contingency plans to bail out the banks. I find those things worrying.

Lord Davies of Stamford: You do not think that the Government have overstated the hazards of withdrawal.

Professor Derrick Wyatt: I do not want to take a position on what the Government say. I would rather indicate precisely what my concerns are and give a reason as to why I am concerned. Those are my concerns, but if there is Brexit we are all in the same boat and we would have to make the very best of it that we could. That would mean coming together in a strong cross-party consensus to show the EU that we could negotiate a long-term agreement that would stick, and that we would not be running backwards and forwards trying to renegotiate things. We would have to do that or business would lose confidence in the future. If that is scaremongering, I am guilty of scaremongering. I think that is a sober assessment, but it is mine and not the Government’s.

Baroness Suttie: What legislative measures would be necessary to extinguish the application of EU law in the devolved nations [Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales]? I have a specific question to Sir David, if I may. Do you think that the Scottish Parliament would be likely to grant legislative consent? If they did not, what would be the consequences?

Sir David Edward: The formal consequence is this. Under Section 29 of the Scotland Act 1998 the Scottish Parliament is bound by EU law, and, ditto, under Section 57(2) the Scottish Government are bound by EU law. Under the Scotland Bill that is going through Parliament at the moment, the Sewel convention will be recognised in Section 2 if it becomes an Act. Therefore, as I see it, you would have to amend the Scotland Act and, therefore, you would have to have legislative consent from the Scottish Parliament. I can envisage certain political advantages being drawn from not acceding to the legislative consent — creating difficulties about it.

The Guardian reports: The prospect of a parliamentary fightback against the result of the EU referendum gathered pace on Sunday, with pro-remain figures saying they would not “roll over and give up”.

Some are urging a second referendum after Brexit negotiations have taken place.

Lord Heseltine has pointed to the practicalities of an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons against leaving the EU. “There is a majority of something like 350 in the House of Commons broadly in favour of the European relationship,” he said.

“There is no way you are going to get those people to say black is white and change their minds unless a) they know what the deal is and b) it has been supported either by an election or by another referendum,” Heseltine told Sky News. “So there’s a dramatic urgency to get on with the negotiations.”

He called for a cross-party group of MPs to look at the options and “articulate the case for Britain rethinking the result of the referendum”. [Continue reading…]

When David Cameron announced his resignation he concluded his remarks by saying, “I love this country, and I feel honored to have served it, and I will do everything I can do in future to help this great country succeed.”

I’m neither a fan of Cameron’s nor a sucker for patriotic declarations, yet I haven’t the slightest doubt that his declaration of love for this country was completely sincere. Neither am I in any doubt about which country he was referring to: the United Kingdom.

No one can be in any doubt that withdrawal from the EU will set the UK on a path to further fragmentation as Scotland seeks independence and Northern Ireland struggles with the consequences of a tightly controlled border.

Cameron said:

We must now prepare for a negotiation with the European Union. This will need to involve the full engagement of the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Ireland governments to ensure that the interests of all parts of our United Kingdom are protected and advanced.

In making this point he was perhaps intimating that while refusing to question the choice of the British people, neither he nor anyone else can question the fact that Britain did not speak with one voice on Thursday.

Even in the English regions where Leave won, none of them reached 60%. The most emphatic results came from Scotland with 62% and London with 59.9% with each choosing Remain.

Unlike the 1975 referendum where, with 67.2% favoring continued membership of the European Community, British voters sent their government a clear message, the instruction coming from the British people in 2016 is riddled with ambiguity.

Cameron nevertheless said “there can be no doubt about the result” and “the will of the British people is an instruction that must be delivered” but he hedged on the timing of that process — he says that’s a decision for his successor.

There is now a mood in which few in the political establishment are eager to rush forward — including the leaders of the Leave camp.

As much as this period of hesitation might frustrate those in the EU whose patience with the UK has already expired, a time for reflection is a good thing. It creates a space in which new possibilities can be explored.

Having stepped back from the cliff’s edge there is perhaps a growing recognition that there is in fact no irresistible force compelling anyone to jump.

Maybe Cameron will never make a public mea culpa, but perhaps behind closed doors in Brussels he can admit he made the greatest political blunder of his career.

It’s already cost him his job, but if he wants to help his country succeed, he first has to prevent it falling apart. The only way of doing that is to navigate a reversal.

As much as the EU wants to mitigate the harm incurred by the UK’s decision to withdraw, rather than trying to get this process started and finished as fast as possible, it would be in everyone’s interests if the process doesn’t even begin.

That should not mean entering into a period of prolonged uncertainty. What it requires is a massive course correction.

Cynics will say this is what politicians do all the time — promise one thing and then end up doing the opposite. But in a representative democracy, leaders of good conscience know there are times when to do the right thing means to risk facing public anger.

Having recognized his failure, Cameron may be in a better position than anyone else to put the future of the UK first without allowing his judgement to get swayed by considerations of personal advantage.

Fintan O’Toole writes: All but a few diehards had learned to live with the partition of the island of Ireland. Why? Because the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic had become so soft as to be barely noticeable. If you crossed it, you had to change currencies, and if you were driving you had to remember that the speed limits were changing from kilometres per hour to miles. But these are just banal details. They do not impinge on the simple, ordinary experience of people sharing an island without having to be deeply conscious of division.

What will now happen is not that the old border will come back. It’s much worse than that. The old border marked the line between neighbouring polities that had a common travel area and an intimate, if often fraught, relationship. It was a customs barrier. The new border will be the most westerly land frontier of a vast entity of more than 400 million people, and it will be an immigration (as well as a customs) barrier.

It will, if the Brexiters’ demands to take back control of immigration to the UK are meant seriously, have to be heavily policed to keep EU migrants who have lawfully entered the Republic from moving into the UK. And it will run between Newry and Dundalk, between Letterkenny and Derry. The Dublin-Belfast train will have to stop for passport controls. (Given that the border could not be secured with army watchtowers during the Troubles, it is not at all clear how this policing operation will work.)

Meanwhile, the cornerstone of the peace settlement, the Belfast agreement of 1998, is being undermined. One of the key provisions of the agreement is that anyone born in Northern Ireland has the right to be a citizen of the UK or Ireland or both. What does that mean in the new dispensation? Can someone be both an EU citizen and not an EU citizen? Likewise, the agreement underpins human rights through the “complete incorporation into Northern Ireland law of the European Convention on Human Rights”. Though not strictly required by Brexit, the leave leadership is committed to removing the convention from UK law – in other words to ripping out a core part of the peace settlement. [Continue reading…]

Kathryn Gaw writes: Almost 20 years have passed since the Good Friday Agreement, and huge progress has been made in that time. Since our last referendum in 1998, Northern Ireland has enjoyed relative peace, and the province has flourished. The tourist industry is now worth £723m and the economy has been further boosted by the surprise emergence of the local film industry, which hosts the Game of Thrones cast and crew for six months of the year. The IT industry is also growing, and there are plans to attract even more private investment by bringing corporate tax down to 12.5%, in line with the Republic of Ireland.

The majority of this growth has been courtesy of the EU itself. Northern Ireland received almost £2.5bn in the last EU funding round, and a further £2bn is promised before 2020. The EU has also helped to create a number of cross-border programmes such as Intertrade, Peace and Tourism Ireland, all of which have been hugely successful in bringing together communities both north and south of the border. Today, Northern Ireland is more integrated than it has ever been – even if sectarian attacks and marching season riots haven’t been eliminated completely. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: When David Cameron delivered his resignation speech outside No 10 on Friday, he said he would leave the task of triggering article 50 of the Lisbon treaty – the untested procedure governing how an EU member state leaves the bloc – to his successor.

This has prompted much speculation – and a glimmer of hope – for those who want Britain to remain in the European Union. Cameron, they argue, had repeatedly said during the campaign that article 50 would be triggered immediately if Vote Leave were to win the Brexit referendum.

By not doing so, the theory is, and by handing the responsibility to whoever succeeds him, Cameron has handed the next prime minister a poisoned chalice. Given the dramatic reaction to Brexit – on world stock markets, on the foreign exchanges, in Scotland, across Europe – and with the enormity of the consequences of leaving the EU now plain, who will dare pull the trigger?

One consequence of this, as a below-the-line commenter argued on the Guardian website, is that Cameron has effectively snookered the Brexit camp: they may have won the referendum, but they cannot use the mandate they have been given because if they do so they will be seen to be knowingly condemning the UK to recession, breakup and years of pain.

This could mean, as lawyer and writer David Allen Green has suggested in a blogpost, that “the longer article 50 notification is put off, the greater the chance it will never be made … As long as the notification is not sent, the UK remains part of the EU. And there is currently no reason or evidence to believe that, regardless of the referendum result, the notification will be sent at all.” [Continue reading…]

The Guardian also reports: [Prominent Brexit campaigner Dr] Liam Fox cast doubt on the necessity of triggering the article 50 clause of the Lisbon treaty that sets out the legal process for a country’s EU withdrawal.

“A lot of things were said in advance of this referendum that we might want to think about again and that [invoking article 50] is one of them,” said the Conservative MP.

“I think that it doesn’t make any sense to trigger article 50 without having a period of reflection first, for the cabinet to determine exactly what it is that we’re going to be seeking and in what timescale.” [Continue reading…]

John Harris writes: “If you’ve got money, you vote in,” she said, with a bracing certainty. “If you haven’t got money, you vote out.” We were in Collyhurst, the hard-pressed neighbourhood on the northern edge of Manchester city centre last Wednesday, and I had yet to find a remain voter. The woman I was talking to spoke of the lack of a local park, or playground, and her sense that all the good stuff went to the regenerated wonderland of big city Manchester, 10 minutes down the road.

Only an hour earlier, I had been in Manchester at a graduate recruitment fair, where nine out of 10 of our interviewees were supporting remain, and some voices spoke about leave voters with a cold superiority. “In the end, this is the 21st century,” said one twentysomething. “Get with it.” Not for the first time, the atmosphere around the referendum had the sulphurous whiff not just of inequality, but a kind of misshapen class war.

And now here we are, with that terrifying decision to leave. Most things in the political foreground are finished, aren’t they? Cameron and Osborne. The Labour party as we know it, now revealed once again as a walking ghost, whose writ no longer reaches its supposed heartlands. Scotland – which at the time of writing had voted to stay in the EU by 62% to 38% – is already independent in most essential political and cultural terms, and will presumably soon be decisively on its way.

Sinn Féin is claiming that the British government “has forfeited any mandate to represent the economic or political interests of people in Northern Ireland”. These are seismic things to happen in peacetime, and this is surely as dramatic a moment for the United Kingdom as – when? The postwar datelines rattle through one’s mind – 1979, 1997, 2010 – and come nowhere near.

Because, of course, this is about so much more than the European Union. It is about class, and inequality, and a politics now so professionalised that it has left most people staring at the rituals of Westminster with a mixture of anger and bafflement. Tangled up in the moment are howling political failures that only compounded that problem: Iraq, the MPs’ expenses scandal, the way that Cameron’s flip from big society niceness to hard-faced austerity compounded all the cliches about people you cannot trust, answerable only to themselves (something that applied equally to the first victims of our new politics, the Liberal Democrats).

Most of all, Brexit is the consequence of the economic bargain struck in the early 1980s, whereby we waved goodbye to the security and certainties of the postwar settlement, and were given instead an economic model that has just about served the most populous parts of the country, while leaving too much of the rest to anxiously decline. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: As the bands played on at the Glastonbury music festival in Somerset, England, Lewis Phillips and his friends drowned their sorrows in song and alcohol.

“We’re the ones who’ve got to live with it for a long time, but a group of pensioners have managed to make a decision for us,” Mr. Phillips, 27, said on Friday of Britain’s decision to withdraw from the European Union. He said he was now “terrified” about the country’s economic prospects.

Louise Driscoll, a 21-year-old barista in London, spent most of the day crying. “I had a bad feeling in my gut,” she said of Britain’s referendum on Europe. “What do we do now? I’m very scared.” Her parents both voted to leave the bloc, she said, and “will probably be gloating.”

The vote to leave the European Union exposed tensions and fault lines in British society, but perhaps none more gaping than its generational divisions. [Continue reading…]

Jochen Bittner writes: I was born in 1973, the year Britain entered the European Economic Community. And like Britain, I have always been skeptical about the quasi-religious, ever-closer-union ideology that gripped so many proponents of the European Union, especially the anxious old men of my parents’ generation, who swore that the only alternative to unification was a relapse into nationalism.

And now this. Just as Europeans of my generation were being relieved of those anxious old men, another type stepped onstage: the angry old men.

These politicians — men and women, to be sure — are young enough not to have experienced world war, but they are old enough to idealize the pre-1989 era and a simpler, pre-globalization world. At the same time, they are obviously too sclerotic to imagine how democratic institutions can adjust to the new realities. With their aggressive posturing, these Nigel Farages, Marine Le Pens, Geert Wilderses and Donald J. Trumps are driving the debate — and possibly driving the West off a cliff.

“It’s a victory for ordinary, decent people who have taken on the establishment,” declared Nigel Farage, the head of the U.K. Independence Party. Rubbish. It was a victory for people who have neither the guts nor the imagination to take on the downsides of globalization. Yes, globalization and Europeanization have taken their tolls, both on traditional forms of democracy and on traditional job security. But instead of tackling these problems, the Farages of the world have started the next ideological war. [Continue reading…]

Yanis Varoufakis writes: Leave won because too many British voters identified the EU with authoritarianism, irrationality and contempt for parliamentary democracy while too few believed those of us who claimed that another EU was possible.

I campaigned for a radical remain vote reflecting the values of our pan-European Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25). I visited towns in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, seeking to convince progressives that dissolving the EU was not the solution. I argued that its disintegration would unleash deflationary forces of the type that predictably tighten the screws of austerity everywhere and end up favouring the establishment and its xenophobic sidekicks. Alongside John McDonnell, Caroline Lucas, Owen Jones, Paul Mason and others, I argued for a strategy of remaining in but against Europe’s established order and institutions. Against us was an alliance of David Cameron (whose Brussels’ fudge reminded Britons of what they despise about the EU), the Treasury (and its ludicrous pseudo-econometric scare-mongering), the City (whose insufferable self-absorbed arrogance put millions of voters off the EU), Brussels (busily applying its latest treatment of fiscal waterboarding to the European periphery), Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble (whose threats against British voters galvanised anti-German sentiment), France’s pitiable socialist government, Hillary Clinton and her merry Atlanticists (portraying the EU as part of another dangerous “coalition of the willing”) and the Greek government (whose permanent surrender to punitive EU austerity made it so hard to convince the British working class that their rights were protected by Brussels).

Insidious forces will be activated under the surface with a terrible capacity to inflict damage on Europe and Britain
The repercussions of the vote will be dire, albeit not the ones Cameron and Brussels had warned of. The markets will soon settle down, and negotiations will probably lead to something like a Norwegian solution that allows the next British parliament to carve out a path toward some mutually agreed arrangement. Schäuble and Brussels will huff and puff but they will, inevitably, seek such a settlement with London. The Tories will hang together, as they always do, guided by their powerful instinct of class interest. However, despite the relative tranquillity that will follow on from the current shock, insidious forces will be activated under the surface with a terrible capacity for inflicting damage on Europe and on Britain. [Continue reading…]

Natalie Nougayrède writes: Diplomatic choreography won’t be enough to restore what has been shattered, and what the Brexit vote has starkly reflected: there is no longer confidence among European citizens that a collective endeavour of solidarity and values can deliver what they need and want.

The confidence of the lower and middle classes is now closer to zero than it ever has been. Remember recent surveys: only 38% of the French view the EU positively today (the same poll said it was 44% of the British).

The French historian Fernand Braudel once wrote that “history can be divided into three movements: that which moves rapidly, moves slowly and appears not to move at all”. History is now accelerating right before our eyes. It is moving swiftly in a bad direction, and for those who, as I did, witnessed the spread of democracy and the reunification of the continent that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, or who were brought up to think that Europe’s future lay in the coming together of its disparate parts, it is an ominous and painful moment.

The British divorce will be messy and drawn out. It will divert energy needed to address other challenges like security, unemployment, migration, and the geopolitical chaos in the EU’s neighbouring regions. It could make it even harder to address the gap that increasingly divides the political elites from the public mood across the continent. Pro-EU politicians are in denial if they think more European integration slogans are the solution. Citizens simply won’t buy it. For more than 10 years now, EU-related referendums have been a disaster. The federalist-minded European constitution project was rejected in 2005, and this year the Netherlands voted against an EU association agreement with Ukraine. Hungary is due to hold a referendum on EU refugee quotas. Expect a no.

If something can be salvaged, the EU needs to rebuild itself from the ground up, not top down. It is a folly to think measures to fix eurozone governance will suffice, however needed those may be. Anyone who has regularly travelled across Europe in recent years and sounded out grassroots perceptions knows that something else is lacking: a sense of purpose, a belief that Europe stands for something positive and that it can act in people’s interest. [Continue reading…]

Jonathan Freedland writes: We have woken up in a different country. The Britain that existed until 23 June 2016 will not exist any more.

For those who ran the leave campaign – and for the clear majority who voted to leave the European Union – that is a cause for celebration. This, they insist, will be remembered as our “independence day”. From now, they say, Britain will be a proud, self-governing nation unshackled by the edicts of Brussels.

But for the 48% who voted the other way, and for most of the watching world, Britain is changed in a way that makes the heart sink rather than soar.

For one thing, there is now a genuine question over the shape of this kingdom. Scotland (like London) voted to remain inside the European Union. Every one of its political parties (bar the UK Independence Party) urged a remain vote. Yet now Scotland is set to be dragged out of the EU, against its collective will.

The demand will be loud and instant for Scotland to assure its own destiny by breaking free of the UK. This is precisely the kind of “material change” that the Scottish National party always said would be enough to warrant a second referendum to follow the one held in 2014. And this time, surely, there will be a majority for independence. So a first legacy of 23 June could well be the imminent break-up of the UK.

The implications will be profound for Northern Ireland too. The return of a “hard border” between north and south imperils a peace which was hard-won and too often taken for granted. Note this morning’s warning from Sinn Fein that the British government has “forfeited any mandate to represent the economic and political interests of people in Northern Ireland.”

Of course, the divisions don’t end there. England is exposed as a land divided: London, along with the cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Bristol stood apart from the rest of England and Wales in wanting to stay in. There is a yawning class divide, pitting city against town and, more profoundly, those who feel they have something to lose against those who feel they do not. What determined the outcome as much as anything else was the fact that the latter group, many concentrated in what used to be called Labour heartlands, defied the party’s call and voted out. This is a deep rift that will haunt the politics of the coming era. [Continue reading…]

Rafael Behr writes: There is a difference between measuring the height of a drop and the sensation of falling; between the sight of a wave and hearing it crash on to the shore; between the knowledge of what fire can do and feeling the heat as the flames catch.

The theoretical possibility that Britain might leave the European Union, nominally the only question under consideration on the ballot paper, turns out to prefigure nothing of the shock when the country actually votes to do it. Politics as practised for a generation is upended; traditional party allegiances are shredded; the prime minister’s authority is bust – and that is just the parochial domestic fallout. A whole continent looks on in trepidation. It was meant to be unthinkable, now the thought has become action. Europe cannot be the same again.

The signs were always there, even if the opinion polls nudged Remainers towards false optimism at the very end of the campaign. Brexit had taken the lead at times and always hovered in the margin of error. But the statistical probability of an earthquake doesn’t describe the disorienting feeling of the ground lurching violently beneath your feet.

That is what has happened, although there is no geographical epicentre of the Brexit vote. The first tremor was in the north-east, Sunderland, but it was soon clear that towns across England where remain needed to notch up a steady tally of votes were tilting the other way, sometimes dramatically. Portsmouth, Corby, Southampton, Nuneaton – areas that traditionally swing elections clocked up nearly two-thirds support for leave. A counter-revolution based largely in London and Scotland simply couldn’t muster the numbers to hold the line for EU membership.

But the practical reality of UK participation in European institutions felt almost beside the point as great cultural and geographical fault lines cracked the political landscape open. Although the vote has to be interpreted as an instruction to withdraw from the EU, it sounded in the early hours of Friday more like a howl of rage and frustration by one half of the country against the system of power, wealth and privilege perceived to be controlled by an elite residing, well, elsewhere. Westminster was the target as much as Brussels. But even that account doesn’t quite do justice to the complexity of what unfolded, or rather, what crumbled. [Continue reading…]