2016-06-24reuters.com

Britain has voted to leave the European Union, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron and dealing the biggest blow since World War Two to the European project of forging greater unity.

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World stocks saw more than $2 trillion wiped off their value, with indices across Europe heading for their sharpest one-day drops ever. Britain's big banks took a $100 billion battering, with Lloyds, Barclays and RBS falling as much as 30 percent at one point.

The United Kingdom itself could now break apart, with the leader of Scotland - where nearly two-thirds of voters wanted to stay in the EU - saying a new referendum on independence from the rest of Britain was "highly likely".

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The EU for its part will be economically and politically damaged, facing the departure of a member with its biggest financial centre, a U.N. Security Council veto, a powerful army and nuclear weapons. The world's biggest trading bloc -- which rose out of the ashes of two world wars, fascist and communist totalitarianism to unite a continent of prosperous democracies -- will lose around a sixth of its economic output.

"It's an explosive shock. At stake is the break up pure and simple of the union," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. "Now is the time to invent another Europe."



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