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JUNE 24, 2016
The takeaways Disaster for PM and Labour, triumph for Farage and political turmoil ahead
By Tom McTague
LONDON — British democracy is brutal. Barely seven hours after polls closed Thursday night, the result was declared: Britain had voted to leave the European Union. Warnings of economic catastrophe were ignored. Voters just didn’t believe them, or thought it was a price worth paying. Anger with the government’s failure to control immigration was key, MPs said. A year after leading the Conservative Party to its “sweetest victory” in the general election, David Cameron announced his resignation. He will forever be remembered as the prime minister who lost Europe. Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who broke with Cameron to back Brexit, has his “Independence Day.” But Cameron may also be the man See TAKEAWAYS on Page 2
Cameron speaks out
“I will do everthing I can as prime minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months. “But I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination. “This is not a decision I have taken lightly.”
Market panic Brexit financial shock hits globally, and will be felt for years. Story, Page 4
Aftermath EU leaders urge calm but vote marks historic rejection of European order
The pound’s wild ride
By Nicholas Vinocur and Paul Dallison
The pound sterling reached a 2016 record by the close of polls, at around $1.50. Then it dropped 6 cents in 15 minutes from midnight U.K. time as results in the north of England rolled in. Within two hours, the currency had dropped 10 cents, before diving to $1.32. $1.50
$1.45
$1.40
$1.35
$1.30 11 p.m.
1 a.m.
3 a.m.
Source: Bloomberg Markets data (times are U.K.)
5 a.m.
7 a.m.
9 a.m.
POLITICO
The final tally Remain: 48 percent (16,141,241 votes)
Leave: 52 percent (17,410,742 votes)
Britain voted to leave the European Union Thursday, setting in motion a historic divorce from the continent that raised questions about the future of the soon-to-be 27-member bloc, prompted British Prime Minister David Cameron to announce he would resign, and unleashed a storm of volatility on financial markets. The vote’s final result — 52 percent for Leave and 48 percent — instantly triggered a global market selloff as the world fretted about the future of London, its biggest financial center. Britain’s pound sterling currency crashed to a 30-year low, the FTSE share index shed billions of pounds in value. Hours after the final result was unveiled, Cameron stepped out onto the doorstep of Number 10 Downing Street to announce his resignation in October. “It would not be right for me to be See REFERENDUM on Page 3
A kingdom clearly divided
While the Leave camp won the overall vote, all municipalities in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that Scotland has spoken decisively (indeed, with 62% voting Remain), adding: “The vote here makes clear that the people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union.”
ODD ANDERSEN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
UK elects to leave, and so does Cameron
How the UK exit will work What’s next? Four ways the British government could approach quitting the bloc
By Nicholas Hirst
What happens now that British voters have chosen to leave the European Union? For now, the U.K. will remain a member of the EU. Thursday’s referendum is not a formal, legally binding trigger for a British exit. Instead there are various options available to the British government from a legal point of view. Which option they choose will now be guided by politics, both domestically and more broadly across the Continent. Note that France has made it clear it is not inclined to give the Brits an easy ride. Insiders tend to think that Berlin will follow suit. That could add a hefty dose of hostility to the negotiation. MEP Alexander Lambsdorff speaks for many in Brussels when he says negotiations should to be wrapped up by 2019 in time for the European Parliament elections. 1. THE ARTICLE 50 ROUTE
European treaties already provide for a route for a member state to exit the EU. Article 50 gives EU countries two years to negotiate a “withdrawal agreement.” Leaders of the remaining 27 EU countries would issue guidelines. The Commission would probably negotiate on their behalf. How does this happen?
The law is not clear. The British government would presumably notify other EU members — maybe via the Commission or the European Council, maybe in writing or orally — of its intention to activate Article 50. When to notify?
No one expects Prime Minister David Cameron to send a notification “while waiting for the removal vans to arrive,” says one EU lawyer. But EU insiders say Brussels would be wary of too long a delay, not least because it wants to lose its reputation for backroom dealing. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has said this would happen within two weeks of the referendum. However Vote Leave’s Dominic Cummings told the Economist this would be “mad and like putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger.”
What would an exit deal cover?
At lot. For example, Britain would want transitional arrangements for EU citizens in the U.K., and for Brits on the Continent. What happens to the work status of foreign French bankers in London, or to the health insurance of grannies on the Spanish coast? The same logic would extend to myriad other areas of law. What about market access?
Negotiators must “take into account” an exiting country’s “future relationship” with the EU. This is where Britain needs to decide if it wants a deal like the Norwegians, the Swiss or the Turks. The default option is the existing World Trade Organization framework, which is broadly what the U.S. has. Here is an overview of the possible options. Striking a new deal
An exit agreement need only be approved by a qualified majority of EU countries — so one country could not keep Britain in EU legal limbo by vetoing the exit. Almost everyone agrees that two years would not be enough to sort out future relations. Once the two years are up, Britain is out with an agreement or without one. If there is a deal setting out the U.K.’s future relations with the EU, it would likely touch on issues that are not strict EU competencies. That could mean that all national capitals and parliaments might also have to sign off on the withdrawal agreement. Buying more time
wrote U.K. Justice Secretary Michael Gove in an essay published by Portland Communications, a consultancy. There is considerable precedent for EU leaders getting together behind closed-doors to strike a deal: See the Greek crisis. Yet this process is even more woolly than the Article 50 route. Who, for example, would lead negotiations and take charge of the timetable? The lack of a fixed deadline and a legal process would likely result in the negotiations meandering. Impending disaster tends to focus EU minds: Again, see again the Greek crisis. Generally, Brussels may be unwilling to engage in more of the backroom dealing that has attracted such criticism during the referendum campaign. Critics could argue Article 50 has been triggered anyway EU law does not set out a formal process for activating exit negotiations. Opponents could argue the referendum itself was sufficient notification for Article 50’s clock to start ticking. “Simply having it in the newspapers that there has been an exit is not enough for a notification,” says Alec Burnside, a Brussels-based lawyer at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. But what about the U.K. prime minister’s report to the European Council of the referendum result? Lawyers could certainly try. Disgruntled U.K. Euroskeptics could even petition European courts on the grounds the EU has “failed to act.”
3. PARLIAMENT IS SOVEREIGN
Any extension needs to be approved by all remaining 27 member states. Lambsdorff, the MEP, is probably right when he says the U.K.’s best chance of securing extra time would be to request an extension the moment it files its notification.
Assuming the British government can get a majority in the parliament, the U.K. is free to revoke the 1972 European Communities Act that gives EU law effect in the U.K. But that would leave the U.K. in legal limbo when dealing with the EU (whose legal system would still consider it a member).
Can Brits change their mind at the last minute?
4. INTERNATIONAL LAW COULD OVERRULE EU LAW
“Article 50 is silent about the possibility or the interdiction for a member state, after having notified a decision to withdraw, to change its mind,” notes Jean-Claude Piris, who lead the Council’s legal services 1988-2010. Eventually the EU courts would have to decide. 2. INFORMAL TALKS BEFORE TRIGGERING ARTICLE 50
“There is no obligation to invoke [Article 50] immediately after a vote to leave. We are in control of the process,”
A United Nations convention on treaty law says a country can break its international treaty obligations where there has been a “fundamental change in circumstances.” A majority in favor of Brexit is just such a situation, argue Frank Vibert, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, and Gunnar Beck, a U.K. lawyer. “There is simply no way that the European Court of Justice would permit [EU law] to bend to international law in this manner,” says Kenneth Armstrong, a law professor at Cam-
What we learned after the vote TAKEAWAYS from Page 1
who lost Scotland — and possibly even Northern Ireland. By 5 a.m. in the U.K., it became clear that every area of Scotland had backed Remain. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, was ominously quick out the blocks. “The vote makes clear the people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union,” she said in a statement released before Cameron had emerged from his bunker in Number 10. Northern Ireland had also backed Remain and Sinn Fein were calling for Irish reunification. By 5.30 a.m, it was beginning to sink in. The pound was tanking, Nigel Farage was jubilant, Labour in meltdown. But Cameron was nowhere to be seen. Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom, one of the stars of the Brexit campaign, admitted it was “perfectly likely there would be some volatility” on the markets but insisted the fundamentals of the U.K. economy were sound. 2
“If we keep calm, take measured decisions, we will fine,” she said. It’s not impossible she could soon be making the decisions as prime minister. Her two Brexit allies, Johnson and U.K. Justice Secretary Michael Gove, were keeping quiet. Cameron finally appeared at just after 8.15 a.m. and announced his departure by October at the latest. Here are six early takeaways from a seismic night:
1. ENGLAND SPEAKS
Northern Ireland had its Troubles. Scotland had its referendum. Now England has had its revolution. “Little England” goes the cry. But England isn’t little within the United Kingdom — it’s all powerful. Outside London, ordinary English towns overwhelming rejected Brussels and its rules and regulations, red tape and free movement. Liberal, metropolitan London, in so many ways a different country, had been overwhelmed by the sheer Euroskeptic zeal of ordinary, working-class England.
bridge University.
Is any of this likely?
Both methods 3 and 4 risk damaging relations with Brussels, where there is a strong preference for following the rules and avoiding legal headaches down the road. Even an amicable deal risks major legal hurdles. Any exit deal struck outside Article 50 would risk legal challenge before the EU courts. What is more, any treaty changes would trigger a referendum in other EU countries, which could either stop the process dead and/or infuriate those on the other side of the table. What happens to legislation in the intervening period?
The Leave campaign has proposed immediate legislation limiting the powers of the EU courts and free movement into the U.K. But EU law still applies in the U.K pending an exit. “A bill that limits the powers of the ECJ is a plain contradiction of EU treaty obligations,” says Burnside, the EU law lawyer. The U.K. would face court action. The Commission can and does sue governments that breach EU law — and in particular those that expressly flout it. Although the process is usually lengthy, EU lawyers insist it can act speedily where necessary. EU courts could impose daily fines under an accelerated procedure. In parallel, EU citizens could sue the U.K. government for compensation if they suffer damages as a result of conduct contrary to EU law. However, U.K. action is unlikely to contravene a fundamental value. Member states have the power to punish other member countries that flout the EU’s fundamental values. “My understanding is that this would not be applied for restricting free movement,” says an EU lawyer. The U.K. courts would face a constitutional crisis. Judges would have, on the one hand, the 1972 Act telling them to apply EU law and, on the other, legislation restricting it. A fundamental tenet of EU treaty law is that it trumps all national law. “Issues of legality would be fought out in the courts, leaving judges in a very difficult situation,” Burnside says. There would be a “constitutional conflict [that] would antagonize and politicize the judiciary,” warns Armstrong, the law professor at Cambridge. Governments of Scotland and Wales could also raise constitutional concerns.
What does it matter to Great Yarmouth or Grimsby if “the City” gets hit? Why should they care about rich bankers and lawyers in the capital? In Sunderland, one of the first cities to declare, voters had put two fingers up to Brussels, despite the area’s largest employer, Nissan, calling for a Remain vote. England is stereotypically conservative and eccentric. On Thursday it was revolutionary, a distinctly European trait.
rious. Sturgeon hinted before the result had been confirmed that another vote on independence was inevitable. Over in Northern Ireland there were even bigger concerns that the peace process could be in jeopardy. The six counties had voted 56 percent to 44 percent to Remain, but they will now have a border with the Republic. Gibraltar too will fast become a concern for Downing Street. More than 90 percent of the outpost had backed EU membership.
2. DISUNITED KINGDOM
3. IMMIGRATION WINS OUT
If England was conclusive, so too was Scotland. Almost 600,000 more Scots voted to Remain than Leave. In Edinburgh, the capital, 74 percent backed European Union membership. Less than two years ago, Cameron had seen off independence, warning that an independent Scotland would not be allowed into the European Union. Now they are being dragged out by their English cousins across the border. The Scottish National Party was fu-
As the results started to become clear at about 3:30 a.m., Labour’s Jonathan Reynolds said wearily: “I found the overwhelming strength of feeling on immigration just trumped all other issues.” People had stopped listening. They had a way to cut immigration and they were going to take it. Outside the big metropolitan areas, there was real anger over the governSee TAKEAWAYS on Page 4 JUNE 24, 2016 POLITICO.EU
REFERENDUM from Page 1
the captain that steers our country to the next destination,” said Cameron, whose call for a referendum set the stage for Brexit. “The British people have voted to leave the European Union. Their will must be respected.” George Osborne, the U.K. chancellor of the exchequer and architect of the “Remain” campaign, was also expected to step down. Meanwhile on the continent, where Europeans were reeling from the shock of a widely unexpected outcome, EU leaders called for calm and said that above all, members of the bloc needed to maintain unity. In the back of many minds was the possibility that Brexit could set off a cascade of referendums in other states where Euroskeptic movements are on the rise. At a press conference in Brussels, EU Council President Donald Tusk said there would be no “legal vacuum” as a result of Brexit. “It’s true that the past years have been the most difficult ones in the history of our Union,” the Polish leader said. “But I always remember what my father used to tell me: What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” He added: “It’s a historic moment but for sure, it’s not a moment for hysterical reactions.” With the European Union facing the biggest blow to its development since its founding, foreign ministers of founding states including Germany and France announced an emergency meeting Saturday in Berlin. The rapid-response meeting will precede a summit of all EU leaders next POLITICO.EU JUNE 24, 2016
week in Brussels, where the main topic will be how to react to Britain’s imminent departure. Tusk said a “wider reflection” was needed on the EU’s future.
‘VICTORY’
While Remain campaigners bore stony expressions Friday morning. Nigel Farage, leader of the Euroskeptic United Kingdom Independence Party, was euphoric. Calling for June 23 to be considered a new “British Independence Day,” Farage declared victory over a well-funded “Remain” campaign that had won the backing of U.S. President Barack Obama, all other EU leaders and multinational companies wedded to the status quo. “Dare to dream that a dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom,” said Farage shortly after 4 a.m. in Britain. “This will be a victory for real people, for ordinary people, for decent people.” The European Union was a “doomed project,” added Farage, as Euroskeptic leaders from Marine Le Pen in France to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands rejoiced and called for referendums in their own countries. Farage said after the results were made official that Britain had left behind a “failing” and “dying” political union and was now “free to make our own trade deals with the rest of the world.” CAMERON EXITS
Britain’s vote foreshadows years of complex negotiations with the EU. But it had an immediate political impact in Britain, which was sharply divided by
geography, age and political leanings during an emotional campaign marred by the murder of pro-Remain Labor MP, Jo Cox. Late Thursday, senior Leave campaigners, including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, released a letter urging Cameron to stay on as prime minister regardless of the vote’s outcome. The prime minister himself had said he would remain in office no matter how the vote went. But as the result sank in Friday morning, Cameron emerged from Number 10 Downing Street to say he would leave in October, meaning that he will be present for the first negotiations with other EU powers on the future of Britain’s role in the bloc. Cameron’s historic wager on the EU galvanized the British nation like few votes before it. Turnout was high, at 71.8 percent, with almost 30 million people voting. As predicted, Scotland and London were the shining lights for the Remain camp, but turnout in those areas was not as high as in many of the areas that voted Leave. The anti-EU votes were highest in the northeast of England and in Wales — the former was expected, the latter was not. The U.K. remains a member of the EU until it has negotiated its exit. The fallout was immediate. Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the vote “makes clear that the people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union.” All 32 local authority areas returned majorities for Remain. Although Northern Ireland voted in favor of Remain, Irish republican party Sinn Fein
said Britain “has forfeited any mandate to represent economic or political interests of people in N. Ireland.”
ONE SIMPLE QUESTION
British voters faced a single question Thursday: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” There were two boxes on the ballot paper, “Remain” and “Leave.” A record 46,499,537 people were entitled to take part, according to figures from the Electoral Commission. The vote capped months of political drama, intrigue and surprises. It started off calmly enough but soon became nasty, so nasty that it took a tragic event — the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox — to alter the course of the fight, forcing a halt to the campaigns and a softening of the rhetoric. The library in Birstall, West Yorkshire, where Cox was shot and stabbed, was being used as a polling station Thursday and hosted a lunchtime vigil for the murdered politician. In London, two polling stations had to be moved as the equivalent of a month’s worth of rain fell through the night into Thursday morning. The rain did not appear to have deterred voters, many of whom faced long waits to cast their ballot. This was only the third nationwide referendum in British history. The last one took place five years ago, when voters rejected an attempt to change the way MPs are elected. The first one was in 1975, when voters were asked if the U.K. should continue to be a member of what was then the European Economic Community. 3
CHRISTOPHER BOFFOLI FOR POLITICO
UK elects to leave, and so does Cameron
Brexit financial shock felt today, and for years to come What’s next? The U.K.’s financial industry will struggle for years, employ fewer people
That would be considerably more than the two-year negotiation period provided for under Article 50 of the EU treaties. “Our base-case is that this will take longer than two years,” said Clifford Chance’s Souta. The City’s cheerleaders will try to keep their chins up and demand the best possible deal. “Financial services contribute £66.5 billion in taxes to the Treasury — 11 percent of total government receipts — and City businesses I have consulted believe they must be allowed access to the single market without discrimination,” said Mark Boleat, the chairman of the City of London Corporation, the local authority for the Square Mile.
By Francesco Guerrera
LONDON — The world of finance will never be the same after the historic decision by the U.K. to leave the European Union. With markets crashing around the world, an economic shock looming in Britain and possibly the globe, and the prospect of losing London as their European headquarters, financial executives ended their all-night vigil on Friday morning with the realization that their industry was likely to struggle for years, employ fewer people, and find it more difficult to operate across national borders. “I have never been so depressed,” said a senior financial executive after enduring a topsy-turvy referendum night that ended in the shock Brexit decision. “This is a massive own goal. Our industry will shrink, the markets will suffer, and the future looks very very uncertain.” With the U.K. likely to lose access to the EU’s single market — and to the lucrative market for clearing euro-denominated securities — many banks will have to move jobs and operations to what the Brits call “the Continent” at great expense. The net result will be a smaller, more divided sector, according to bankers. One exhausted executive on Friday morning estimated that his firm would end up cutting 15 to 20 percent of all its jobs in Europe once it’s all said and done. Another said that setting up shop in a different EU country, as most financial groups will have to do, could cost an additional $30 billion (€26 billion) in capital. REASSURANCES AGAINST PANIC
But the first order of business for both executives and policymakers will be to deal with the market rout caused by the referendum vote. Two types of intervention are likely in the coming hours and days: verbal reassurances by leaders and central bank governors that the authorities stand ready to help both markets and the world economy; and more concrete moves to stabilize markets that are deeply unsettled and are showing signs of panic. On the first front, Japan’s central
EU WON’T BUDGE
Nigel Farage reacts to a positive result at the Leave.EU referendum party at Millbank Tower in central London this morning. GEOFF CADDICK/ AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
bank Governor Haruhiko Kuroda already tried to soothe the markets’ nerves on Friday morning as did Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament. The Bank of England also stepped into the fray, with a statement saying that it would “take all necessary steps to meet its responsibilities for monetary and financial stability.” But with the pound plunging, U.K. and European equities markets under severe stress, and even the U.S. Dow Jones Industrial Average projected to open at a huge loss, more will be needed — and soon. On the more concrete front, the BoE and the European Central Bank will have to make good on their promise to step in to provide markets with additional liquidity to avoid any snafus in trading that could exacerbate losses and tip hedge funds or even banks over the edge. But that may not be enough. Investors are already wondering whether the BoE will have to raise interest rates to stem the slump in the pound or whether a concerted monetary effort by the Big Four central banks — the U.S. Federal Reserve, ECB, Bank of Japan, and BoE — would be needed. That would bring back memories of the direst days of the financial crisis of 2008, when the monetary authorities had to stand together in a desperate, but ultimately successful, effort to avoid a global depression. Beyond the immediate market reaction, the future looks bleak for global finance and its titans. The first casualty of Brexit is almost certain to be the City of London, which employs around
400,000 people in its two incarnations of the Square Mile and the gleaming skyscrapers of Canary Wharf. Collectively, these workers and their firms contribute more than 8 percent of the U.K.’s economy and have been behind the rise in markets such as property, hospitality, and entertainment. London’ s single biggest attraction to global financial firms — the “passporting” rights that enabled them to operate across the 28 EU member countries from a single base in London — is likely to disappear at the end of the break-up negotiations between the U.K. and Europe. That’s a big blow to U.S. banks like Goldman Sachs, J.P.Morgan Chase, and Citigroup, which have taken advantage of London as their European launching pad to reach a single market of some 500 million people with an economic worth of around $19 trillion. “Large institutions in the U.K. that rely on passports are going to be looking very carefully at market access,” said Phillip Souta, head of U.K. public policy at the law firm Clifford Chance. People close to the situation said all banks had made contingency plans that involved using an existing legal entity on the Continent, or setting up a new one, to continue to benefit from the EU single market. But they also cautioned that it would take time and money to uproot thousands of jobs from London, inject capital into the new entity, and rewrite reams of contracts and legal documents. “We pray that there is no rush in this,” said one financial executive. “Our ideal situation would be a fiveyear transition period.”
What we learned after the vote TAKEAWAYS from Page 2
ment’s failure to control the numbers arriving from Europe every year. David Cameron had twice promised to reduce the net inflow to below 100,000. It had been a “no ifs, no buts,” pledge in 2010 and a rather more limited ambition in 2015. But by May this year — six years into Cameron’s premiership — the number had hit 333,000 a year. John Mann, one of the few Labour MPs to back Brexit, had called the result early. “I called for Leave after the first result,” he said. “The pollsters and pundits clearly have no systems of real voter intelligence.” This, in a nutshell, was the problem. Voters kept telling politicians they wanted something done about immigration, but again and again nothing happened. UKIP surged in the polls, Labour lost touch with its base and 4
support for the EU plummeted. When Cameron won a Conservative majority last year, he had no choice but to honor his pledge to offer the people a referendum. From that point on, he had lost control.
4. CAMERON FINISHED
The prime minister pledged to stay on regardless of the result. No one believed him. Tory MPs launched a pre-emptive bid to shore up the prime minister’s future Thursday night with a letter released at 10 p.m urging him to stay on in Number 10. Some 84 MPs signed it, including Gove and Johnson, but many more hadn’t. Leadership speculation began immediately. Tory MP Sir Bill Cash suggested Cameron may not be able to stay on to oversee the Brexit talks. “Whoever is in Number 10 needs to be absolutely committed to Brexit,”
he told the BBC. Jacob Rees Mogg, the Euroskeptic Conservative backbencher, said there might need to be another general election to sort out the mess. “I wouldn’t rule out a new election,” he said. “There will be a lot of policy areas that need to be discussed if we leave the European Union.” Cameron had been unassailable a year ago. Now, he’s gone. His chancellor of exchequer, George Osborne, must surely now be finished too.
5. FARAGE, VICTORIOUS
Derided, mocked, regularly defeated, Nigel Farage is now triumphant. Whatever people’s view of him — and there are many — Britain would not now be leaving the European Union without him. After conceding defeat at 10 p.m Thursday, Farage was first to declare
That may prove wishful thinking, though. Much will depend on when those negotiations start and what tone the EU decides to adopt towards the exiting Britain. On that front, financial executives weren’t very hopeful. “The initial tone would be conciliatory, but Europe is obliged to take a tough negotiating stance with Britain to discourage other countries from doing the same,” said one financial insider. “This will force every bank to ask itself: Am I a domestic bank or an international bank?” On one issue, the EU is not expected to budge: London will lose the right to clear euro-denominated securities and foreign currency trades. That loss, which will probably benefit Frankfurt, will reduce the British capital’s role as the trading post of global finance, the place where Asia, the U.S., and Europe went to do business when they needed to interact with each other. Many executives said London would not be completely hollowed out, at least not until the EU talks are completed. But it would go back to being a much smaller version of the current financial megalopolis. “It will be like going back to the 1980s and 1990s,” said a banker. “New York is the big winner here.” Even with contingency plans, legal advisers at the ready, and the belief that the world will always need bankers, it was difficult for many financial executives to hide their shock on Friday morning at the British voters’ decision. “I never thought they would,” said a battle-hardened veteran of many crises and market routs. “I never thought they would.”
victory at just after 5:05 a.m. Britain had voted for independence from Brussels “without a shot being fired,” he said, sparking fresh controversy. 6. LABOUR IN TURMOIL
“If we vote Out can we finally get rid of Jeremy?” one exasperated Labour MP said as Brexit surged in the polls before the referendum. Throughout the campaign there had been outright fury with Corbyn. Polling showed 20 percent of Labour supporters did not know the party’s position. Now it’s too late. Labour now faces the very real possibility of fighting a fresh general election with the most left-wing leader it’s ever had. There is widespread panic that they could be wiped out across England, as they were in Scotland last year. JUNE 24, 2016 POLITICO.EU