People woke up to the shock waves that reverberated after it was announced that Britain voted to Leave the European Union. The markets received the biggest shock with the quid falling more than eight percent against the greenback. The footsie one hundred lost more than three percent but the footsie two fifty about eleven percent. 

Adding to the trouble was the surprise announcement by the prime minister that he was going to step down from his position as the leader of the country. Amidst the finger pointing and jeers that greeted the former London mayor there were also grumbling within the opposition for their leader to step down due to his poor support of remaining. The young were vastly upset as they overwhelmingly voted to remain. They are the most impacted by this decision. This was gleaned from the statistics that came out from this referendum. The older rural population voted to leave. 

It is a divided country in many respects. The seventeen and a half million people that voted to leave represented the fifty-two percent that formed the majority. Seventy-two percent of the eligible voters that actually cast a ballot. Due to these statistics an online petition was started claiming that the results were invalid due to the low voter turnout. It reached enough signatures to be read in Parliment for discussion. 

The leader of the Leave camp acknowledged the division that has been created and reiterated that he will work for the best deal during the exit negotiations. These negotiations will take a few years. The Leave camp wants things to settle down but the EU wants to begin right away. The EU wants to quell a growing distaste towards the project in other member states. Countries such as France, Spain, and Italy have large portions of the population that are also disillusioned with the experiment. The situation is complicated. 

Interviews and discussion with different people gauging their reaction from the young to the old and accross the political spectrum helped to form a clearer picture of this emerging complexity that threatens the teetering stability of our planet. The initial reaction is a response to a major event. It’s scale speaks to the importance of what is at stake. What happens and how this is handled will be scrutinized quite closely. There is no prescience for this. 

If the UK gains favorably from this it will start a chain reaction but if the EU is too harsh it will expose itself to be undermined further by the distaste of its actions. The EU will try to frighten the rest into compliance. 

Over the next few days there will be emergency meetings that will take place amongst the leaders of other European nations regarding what to do about this development. For now it is just time to ponder and see what develops next.