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Brexit

The early repercussions of the Brexit vote portend a gathering storm, Mark MacKinnon writes, and the political and economic fallout may have consequences far beyond the EU

Supporters of the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign wait for results at a results party at the Royal Festival Hall in London on June 23, 2016.

Supporters of the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign wait for results at a results party at the Royal Festival Hall in London on June 23, 2016.

ROB STOTHARD/AFP/Getty Images

The first tremors of Britain's political earthquake emanated from a place called Sunderland, in England's economically stagnant northeast, a place that 60 years ago prided itself as "the biggest shipbuilding town in the world."

Today, its shipyards are deserted and the city is more often referred to as the Detroit of the United Kingdom.

Sunderland's 275,000 residents had been expected to vote Leave in Thursday's referendum on Britain's membership in the European Union. The long-time Labour Party stronghold had seen a sevenfold rise in support for the radical U.K. Independence Party during general elections a year earlier, although Labour held onto the seat.

The referendum day forecast was that Sunderland would vote 54 per cent in favour of quitting the EU. When the official count came in – at almost precisely midnight local time – the room fell silent at the London School of Economics, where minutes earlier a trio of political scientists had been cheerfully offering views on what would happen next if the polls, which forecast Britain would narrowly vote to stay in the EU, were indeed correct.

The latest developments, how it happened and what's next

Sunderland's result – 61.3 per cent for Leave to just 38.7 per cent for Remain – was the first clear sign that the pollsters, the analysts, the politicians, the markets and, most remarkably, the betting houses had all gotten it wrong.

Geert Wilders
Dutch Party for Freedom

"I congratulate the British people for beating the political elite in both London and Brussels and I think we can do the same. We should have a referendum about a 'Nexit' as soon as possible." Laszlo Balogh/REUTERS

The tremors quickly multiplied. Jolted by the Sunderland result, currency traders drove the value of the British pound down 5 per cent in a matter of minutes. The free fall in the markets would continue as results from across the north of England confirmed the pattern set by Sunderland – Britain was voting to quit the EU.

It's not a joke: Six editorial cartoons from Brexit

Within a few hours, television commentators were calling the referendum results "seismic." And the aftershocks continued to rattle much that Europe's establishment held dear.

The repercussions will be felt far beyond Britain, or even the EU. Political careers will be ended, markets have crashed and borders may change. But the biggest impact will be the impetus and inspiration the Brexit vote gives to populist politicians and other forces seeking to challenge the status quo worldwide.

With an anti-establishment mood rising on both sides of the Atlantic, it's unclear how long Canada – immune so far – can remain unaffected.

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced Friday that he would stay in his job for the summer, and then step aside. As the man who had called a referendum many viewed as unnecessary, then lead the Remain side in defeat, he had no choice. Someone else, presumably his long-time Conservative Party rival Boris Johnson, will take over and lead Britain's thorny negotiations over its withdrawal from the EU.

The aftershocks kept coming. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Friday that a second independence referendum was now "highly likely" within the next two years, since Scotland had voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, and would not allow itself to be pulled out of the common market by English votes alone.

Marine Le Pen
Leader of France’s National Front

"The British people have given to Europeans and to all the people of the world a shining lesson in democracy. A victory for freedom. We now need the same referendum in France and in EU nations." MATTHIEU ALEXANDRE/GETTY IMAGES

In Northern Ireland, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said the government in London "had forfeited any mandate to represent the economic or political interests of the people." With Mr. McGuinness's Sinn Fein movement calling for a vote on uniting with the rest of Ireland, predicting the future of that island is perhaps the most difficult of all.

European leaders looked stunned as they stood before the microphones in their capital cities. Their faces said it all. The nationalist right had scored a huge, unexpected and irreversible victory in England and Wales. And the populist revolution could be coming their way next.

Marine Le Pen of France's Front National and Geert Wilders of the Netherlands' Party for Freedom were first off the mark, calling for their countries to hold referendums on exiting the EU.

Globe Editorial: The Brexit vote is complete folly, but there is still time to reverse it

To complete the scene, Donald Trump arrived in Britain on Friday – to visit the two golf courses he owns in Scotland – smiling and hailing the vote for Brexit as soon as he stepped out of his helicopter.

"I think it's a great thing that's happened," he said. "It's an amazing vote, very historic."

Growing sense of instability

Is this what the 1930s felt like?

It's a question that bounced around social media sites in recent days, even before the Brexit result became clear. The rise of Mr. Trump, the wars and refugee crises of the Middle East, and the West's sanctions war with Russia have all fed a sense of dangerous instability on the international stage. A gunman killed Jo Cox, a pro-Remain MP. Another world-be assassin tried to grab a policeman's gun to shoot Mr. Trump.

The EU was created to cement peace in Europe, to keep the nations of the continent from trying to tear each other apart as they had so often in the century and a half before the creation of the forerunner European Economic Community in 1957. The first six members included France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg – four countries that had been occupied during the Second World War – as well as Italy and West Germany, two defeated nations that had begun the war as aggressors.

When the EU, which had by then expanded to its current 28 members, was awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it wanted to recognize "six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe."

Unwinding the EU is not just an economic decision, then. It's a fundamental shift in the world order, one that leaves the planet a fundamentally less stable place.

Nicola Sturgeon
Scottish First Minister

"As things stand, Scotland faces the prospect of being taken out of the EU against our will. I regard that as democratically unacceptable... I want to make it absolutely clear that I intend to take all possible steps and explore all options to give effect to how people in Scotland voted - in other words, to secure our continuing place in the EU and in the single market in particular." REUTERS

"It is clear that this political earthquake will have aftershocks throughout the world," said Iain Begg, a senior fellow at the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. "Perhaps the biggest uncertainty will be what happens next in the rest of the EU where the fundamental question will be whether an evidently successful 20th-century project remains valid for the 21st century."

The list of losers from Thursday's result is long: Mr. Cameron, most obviously, and perhaps Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn too, as senior party members were reportedly preparing a putsch Friday against a leader seen as having offered only lacklustre support to the Remain side.

The global authority of U.S. President Barack Obama, who advised British voters to stay in the EU, was further dimmed. So, too, was the clout of institutions, including the Bank of England, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, all of which warned of dire economic consequences – some of which appeared to be coming to pass on Friday – only to see those warnings ignored by voters.

The establishment, both in Britain and around the world, took a kick in the teeth from those who feel the world had been spinning too long in the wrong direction.

The winners from Brexit are the usurpers, the rebels: Mr. Johnson and UKIP leader Nigel Farage in England; Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Wilders and their ilk on the continent.

The Kremlin – which has been accused of providing financial aid to Euroskeptic movements – was celebrating the result, too. Any cracks in EU unity would benefit Russia in its standoff with Washington and Brussels over Ukraine. Speaking Friday, President Vladimir Putin said the vote for a Brexit was caused by "nothing more than overconfidence of the U.K. leadership and its causal attitude to the settlement of the questions momentous for the country and Europe as a whole."

Martin McGuinness
Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister

"The British government now has no democratic mandate to represent the views of the North in any future negotiations with the European Union and I do believe that there is a democratic imperative for a ‘border poll’ to be held." CHARLES McQUILLAN/GETTY IMAGES

China's Communist Party rulers could also be forgiven for smiling in private. "The West" – which has dominated global politics since 1945 – is a little less whole and strong the day after Britain's populist uprising. Trouble elsewhere means less opposition as Beijing expands its claim to the South China Sea. Chaos in London and Brussels means European politicians won't have time to worry so much about how China treats its subjects in Tibet or Hong Kong.

Another group of losers are young British voters, who cast their ballots overwhelmingly in favour of Remain. A clear majority of voters under the age of 45 – and almost three-quarters of those between 18 and 24 – were in favour of staying in the EU. They're the generation who see, or had seen, the future as almost borderless. They could work or study wherever interest and opportunity took them.

They were trumped on referendum day by older generations of English voters, who told the politicians – as well as their own children and grandchildren – that they're fed up with rapid mass immigration, and all its accompanying social and economic change.

"They want to go backwards," Ben Mellish, a 21-year-old history graduate, said of older Brits after casting his own vote for Remain on Thursday.

They're about to get their wish.

The next big shocks

The gathering storm first looked to be a U.S.-only problem. Just a few months ago, Brits and Europeans were smirking at an increasingly backwards-looking America, and wondering how the world's greatest democracy could allow the advance of someone like Mr. Trump.

Vladimir Putin
President of Russia

"Apparently the British people are not satisfied with the way problems are being solved in the security sphere, these problems have become more acute lately with the migration processes." MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AP PHOTO

Then came the shocking result in last month's presidential elections in Austria. Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the far-right Freedom Party, came within 31,000 of winning the job after campaigning – sometimes with a gun on his hip – against a supposed "Muslim invasion" of his country. It was a clear reference to last year's influx of hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers, many of them from the war-torn countries of the Middle East. (The Freedom Party is now challenging the election result in court, hoping to force a rerun.)

It wasn't just Austria. Last Sunday, Virginia Raggi of the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement was elected mayor of Rome in a landslide. Opinion polls in France and the Netherlands, which are both due to hold elections in the next year, suggest Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Wilders could provide the next big shocks to the status quo.

Brexit is the U.K.'s version of a Trump presidency. "Dare to dream that the dawn is on an independent United Kingdom," Mr. Farage celebrated as the results became clear Thursday night. "This will be a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people. We have fought against the multinationals, we have fought against the big merchant banks, we have fought against big politics, we have fought against lies, corruption and deceit."

A few hours before, Mr. Farage looked likely to be the scapegoat if – as the opinion polls were suggesting – the Leave side had fallen just short of winning.

Donald Trump
Presumptive Republican nominee for President

“The people of the United Kingdom ... have declared their independence from the European Union, and have voted to reassert control over their own politics, borders and economy.” CLODAGH KILCOYNE/REUTERS

He had stepped beyond the fringe of civilized debate, the political and media establishment said, by posing in front of a poster that read "Breaking Point" over a photograph of a long line of Middle Eastern refugees marching into central Europe.

That was too far, pundits expected. British voters would be repelled by such dog-whistle politics. Mr. Johnson, who took pains not to appear beside Mr. Farage during the campaign, criticized the poster as "not my politics." When Ms. Cox was murdered a few hours later by a far-right gunman, some predicted a disgusted stampede away from a Brexit and the brand of politics swirling around it.

But the pundits underestimated the depth of the anger in working-class England. The Breaking Point poster, rather than offending voters there, captured the zeitgeist.

Mr. Trump had no trouble seeing the parallels between Brexit's surprise win and his own unexpected rise.

"People are angry all over the world. They're angry over borders, they're angry over people coming into the country and taking over and nobody even knows who they are," he said in Scotland.

"They're angry about many, many things in the U.K., the U.S. and many other places. This will not be the last."

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