Monumental; earth shattering; stupendous. The enormity is taking time to sink in, as a relatively certain future shatters into a thousand alternative scenarios. Some final thoughts for the day.
Markets
That the European stock markets fell further than the UK's suggests that the consequences of Brexit for Europe are potentially more uncertain and more consequential than for Britain.
Xenophibia or national pride?
David Cameron gave a terrific concession speech this morning; it was a rare example of a political leader putting the good of the people he was elected to serve ahead of himself. Resigning for the good of others is unceasingly rare and in the US almost unheard of. As one of the conservative pundits on one of the Sunday morning talk shows said, many years ago after some screwup or other: "ours is not a resigning culture". Doing the right and honorable thing, as Cameron did today, shows character and the values that make me proud to be British. When immigration is on a large scale and ill organized, pockets of homogeneous incoming groups form, do not assimilate and do not adopt the host countries values; they then feel (or are made to feel) excluded and separate, all of which is a recipe for the kind of unrest that, for example, the French have to deal with in the Algerian banlieue in the North of Paris.
The worldly rich and the uneducated poor
Pundits have been looking at voting patterns and have characterized the vote to stay as predominantly rich and educated and to leave, white, poor and uneducated (and by implication, ignorant). That's precisely the kind of patronizing condescension that makes the man in the street angry at, and distrustful of, the elites. And take note, the political class did a terrible job during the campaign of explaining complex questions in honest but simple terms. Instead, in a ludicrous attempt to make the issues intelligible they resorted to half truths, sound-bites and fear-mongering. It was pretty shameful.
Free trade and economic growth; who benefits?
Certainly trade benefits economies as a whole - no argument there. But who in their right mind would agree to a bigger pie if their slice was every smaller then the slice they used to get from a smaller pie? Trade and globalization has raised GDP; but it has also depressed middle class wages. No surprise therefore that many are less enthusiastic about trade agreements than economists, wealthy business leaders and others with sizable equity holdings and stock options, and politicians who hope to be invited (and paid) to lobby for those companies when they leave office.
Balance of power; East/West and inside Europe
Certainly a Europe that speaks with many voices is less powerful than one that speaks in unison. And not doubt Putin will be please at recent events. But to suggest as Richard Haass (President, Council on Foreign Relations) did today on the NewsHour that a shooting war between countries in Europe is now on the cards seems a little far fetched1.
Cultural insensitivity; zip it.
The day before the vote, Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, warned, rather injudiciously, that "out is out". It's unlikely that the British public took kindly to being threatened by the very unaccountable institution from which many were hoping to disentangle themselves. In the same vein, Barack Obama's ill-considered comment about "getting to the back of the queue" for trade negotiations if Britain left the EU probably made a lot of Brits (myself included) a little deaf to warnings of dire consequences (and now suspicious of his statement today that the special relationship will endure).
Junker and Merkle
And interesting aspect of the post Brexit rhetoric is the contrast between Angela Merkel (a politician) and Jean-Claude Juncker (bureaucrat). Juncker, who warned, perhaps injudiciously the day before the vote, that "out is out", said today that he wants Britain to complete the Article 50 withdrawal process as soon as possible. Angela Merkel, in contrast, said this afternoon "there is no quick key solution that we can take from this referendum decision. That would only divide Europe even more". One interpretation of this divergence of opinion is that Angela Merkel is accountable to an electorate while Jean-Claude Juncker is not.
An American-centric world view.
Most of the last two days I've been glued to the BBC. One of the fascinating aspects of watching the PB NewsHour has been the US-centric perspective. The claim Richard Haass made was that the widening of Europe to include the Eastern block ex-Iron Curtain countries into the EU was a carefully orchestrated plan by the US to weaken Russia. European agency in this telling was absent. My own perspective, living though this from the other side of the Atlantic was that this was an extension of Maggie Thatcher's "wider not deeper strategy" that John Major continued to promote in the 1990s. I'm not saying one or other is right, simply that these are quite different perspective on the same set of events.
Haass also suggested that the terms of exit were all but set in stone (and weren't that good from the UK's perspective). That seems to demonstrate a surprising lack of understanding of the current dynamics of European politics. Indeed if things were so preordained, financial markets would not be concerned about uncertainty - but that's not what most economic commentators as suggesting.
1. a British understatement - translation: "You have got to be kidding - that's simply preposterous".
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