The big picture
Or rather, the big question: what happens next? For a thorough overview of the next steps, and who decides what, this walkthrough by the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour is a must-read.
And immediately? European Union leaders are saying Britain should get a move on; Brexiteers Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are saying there’s really no rush; and David Cameron has said he won’t trigger article 50 of the Lisbon treaty (which starts that two-year clock ticking) but will leave that to his successor. Whoever that might be.
The vote to leave the EU sent the pound to its lowest level since 1985 on Friday and at one point wiped £120bn off the value of Britain’s leading shares. Credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s warned that Britain’s AAA credit rating was at risk, and Moody’s cut its outlook on the UK’s long-term debt from stable to negative. Estimates on Friday night said Brexit had wiped out over $2tn of value on markets worldwide.
The president of the European parliament, Martin Schulz, said the announcement by Cameron that the big red button on article 50 would not be pushed until a new prime minister was in place “must not be the last word”:
A whole continent is taken hostage because of an internal fight in the Tory party. I doubt it is only in the hands of the government of the United Kingdom. We have to take note of this unilateral declaration that they want to wait until October, but that must not be the last word.
The president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, agreed:
It doesn’t make any sense to wait until October to try to negotiate the terms of their departure. I would like to get started immediately.
Today, foreign ministers from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Luxembourg will meet in Berlin at the invitation of their German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to take part in an emergency chinwag. And Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister who wrote passionately in the Guardian for Britain to stay in the EU, flies to Paris today to discuss the fallout with French president François Hollande.
The diplomatic flurry comes ahead of Monday’s meeting in Berlin between German chancellor Angela Merkel, Hollande and Renzi, along with European council president, Donald Tusk. The 28 EU commissioners – including the UK commissioner, Jonathan Hill – are expected to meet in Brussels on Monday.
Tuesday brings David Cameron – now Britain’s outgoing prime minister – to Brussels for a two-day summit with EU leaders. Which won’t be too awkward, I’m sure.
The Scottish cabinet also holds an emergency gathering this morning in Edinburgh, after first minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would “explore all options” following the result in Scotland, where every authority voted to remain in the EU.
Sturgeon said on Friday that a second independence referendum was now “highly likely” and this morning’s meeting – expect a statement later – might be the first step towards that, despite opposition from some including Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who said it was “not in the best interests of Scotland”.
Hundreds of people protested in Edinburgh and Glasgow on Friday evening, as Scotland looked to be (like the rest of the UK) on the brink of leaving the EU, despite voting (unlike most of the rest of the UK) in favour of staying by 62% to 38%.
You should also know:
- Senior figures in the remain campaign say they were ‘hobbled’ by No 10.
- Boris Johnson is favourite to replace David Cameron as prime minister.
- Jeremy Corbyn faces a no-confidence motion from Labour MPs.
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The Brexit vote has sparked a scramble for European – especially Irish – passports.
- Mayor Sadiq Khan will tell EU citizens at today’s Pride march: you are welcome in London.
- HBO says filming of Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland won’t be jeopardised by the Brexit vote.
Poll position
If you don’t know the result by now, well, you’re still very welcome here. But we’ll move on. A petition to parliament to trigger a second referendum – arguing that the rules should be changed to require 60% of the vote for victory – has busted through 500,000 signatures. That means it will now be considered for a debate in the Commons. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we won’t be having another EU referendum any time soon.
A separate Change.org petition to mayor Sadiq Khan to declare independence for London – which voted resoundingly to stay in the EU – has passed 100,000 signatures. And there’s even a hashtag, #londependence, so you should definitely take it seriously.
Diary
- Foreign ministers of the six founding EU members, including Germany’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier, meet in Berlin.
- The Scottish cabinet meets in Edinburgh this morning.
- David Cameron is due to appear for Armed Forces Day in Cleethorpes.
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Jeremy Corbyn has cancelled a planned appearance at Glastonbury and will instead give a speech in London this morning.
- This afternoon French president François Hollande meets French party leaders to discuss Brexit, including a rare invitation to the Elysée for Front National’s Marine Le Pen.
- Italian PM Matteo Renzi visits Paris this evening.
Read these: on Brexit
This is dipping barely a tip of a toenail into the pool of stories out there today, but here’s a selection.
John Cassidy in the New Yorker examines why the remainers failed to carry off a win:
Looking ahead, the fate of the Remain campaign should serve as a reminder of the limits of negative campaigning – a reminder that Hillary Clinton would do well to take note of as she goes up against Donald Trump. In confronting populist demagoguery, it isn’t enough to attack its promulgators. To get people to turn out and vote in your favour, you also have to give them something positive to rally behind.
The Leave campaign, for all its lies and disinformation, provided just such a lure. It claimed that liberating Britain from the shackles of the EU would enable it to reclaim its former glory. The Remain side argued, in effect, that while the EU isn’t great, Britain would be even worse off without it. That turned out to be a losing story.
Janice Turner in the Times writes about the voters who wanted out – and says more people should have been doing so before today:
Free movement suits big business, which benefits from cheap, limitless labour; it suits a young, educated cosmopolitan workforce; it suits our now-stymied children who long to study abroad; it suits me. But try selling it in poor provincial towns to people who may not even have a passport; those who feel no benefits from this shiny fast-flowing global world; who are lectured by all parties about the GDP benefits of migration while their own wages are undercut.
That towns with the fewest migrants fear immigration most is always seen as a measure of working-class stupidity. But in a diverse city, migrants are just a few extra pixels in the frame; in a small town they are a distinct event, a challenge to a fragile identity. And identity – as we have seen – is not a phantasm but a banner that people are prepared to risk economic destruction to protect.
On which theme, do take a moment for John Harris’ excellent read: “If you’ve got money, you vote in … if you haven’t got money, you vote out.”
Spectator editor Fraser Nelson writes in the Wall Street Journal that Brexit is “a very British revolution”:
The Brexit battle lines ought to be familiar: they are similar to the socioeconomic battles being fought throughout so many Western democracies. It is the jet-set graduates versus the working class, the metropolitans versus the bumpkins—and, above all, the winners of globalisation against its losers. Politicians, ever obsessed about the future, can tend to regard those left unprotected in our increasingly interconnected age as artifacts of the past. In fact, the losers of globalisation are, by definition, as new as globalisation itself.
To see such worries as resurgent nationalism is to oversimplify. The nation-state is a social construct: Done properly, it is the glue that binds society together. In Europe, the losers of globalisation are seeking the protection of their nation-states, not a remote and unresponsive European superstate. They see the economy developing in ways that aren’t to their advantage and look to their governments to lend a helping hand – or at least attempt to control immigration. No EU country can honestly claim to control European immigration, and there is no prospect of this changing: These are the facts that led to Brexit.
Read these: on David Cameron
It’s a funny day when the resignation of a prime minister isn’t your first headline, but these are indeed funny days.
Jordan Weissmann in Slate says Cameron will go down as one of Britain’s worst prime ministers:
Theoretically, Britain does not have to go through with this idiocy. The referendum is not legally binding. David Cameron doesn’t have to push his country off a cliff, just because voters thought it might be fun. But he seems determined to do so anyway.
Whereas William Hague in the Telegraph says he’ll be remembered as one of the greats:
Resented by some for his success, as well as for his changes to his party and his ability to make his work seem effortless, he will now be extremely difficult to replace … The result is that the United Kingdom has lost a remarkable and successful prime minister. He is a sufficiently well balanced man that we do not need to worry for him. But we do need to worry about who can combine such qualities and command such success in an even tougher decade to come.
Away from the polarising assessments, this Guardian report shows how the prime minister’s night unfolded as victory seemed first attainable, and then impossible:
Cameron was intending to announce a ‘life chances’ strategy in the coming days in an attempt to cement a legacy as a moderniser, not as a leader known for dividing his party and the country over Europe …
Cameron, who had grabbed a couple of hours of sleep by breakfast time, is understood to have taken the bad news for remain in a pragmatic way. He was ready for the prospect of resigning and one source said he did not speak to Gove or to Johnson before taking the decision to step down.
Baffling claim of the day
Courtesy of Ken Livingstone – once again unable to resist an intervention – who gifted us this terribly unsettling image of the campaign:
It was like the whole of the media was obsessed by this sort of struggle between Cameron and Johnson as they gnawed away at each other’s testicles.
The day in a tweet
Look what's number three right now... pic.twitter.com/anddyG2KnM
— Rhiannon Bury (@RhiannonBury) June 24, 2016
If today were a film ...
It would be The Hangover.
And another thing
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