re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

That is a good thing. It gives the Markets plenty time to recover.

Yes seems he's chickened out. He's bottled it. He said before the referendum that HE would stay on and would carry out the wishes of the people.

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

That was because he assumed the people would vote the way he told them to. Now he's had a fit of pique. I can just see that impotent, constapated, pursed lip look and stamping foot as he realised that he blew it.

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

Well, I am mildly surprised at the result, and both pleased and apprehensive. I think this is for the long term good of the country but I'm under no illusions, it won't be easy.

I think the tightness of the result should inform the approach we take in negotiations. We can't disengage from the EU as totally as some would like, IMO. We're likely to go for some sort of association status.

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

Last time I checked it was still above February levels.

Now we're going to have the remainers banging on about what a bad mistake it all is...

Every time something big happens markets fall then rise, the same with currency. My god it's happened often enough over the last decade or two that people really ought to now that by now.

What has happened here is that the unremitting diet of fear plus the succession of people like Obama telling the UK what to do has backfired massively. The campaign was badly handled from the start and Cameron ought to have known better. Unfortunately for him it's cost him his job and a place in history. If the remain campaign had at any time really acknowledged the genuine fears of the people about the EU's future direction I believe they'd have won. Instead they resorted to the fear and insults with people like Sadiq Khan indulging in personal attacks just days after he's been up their telling us all how politics needed to learn something from Jo Cox's death. These people will not learn. They happily peddle the sort of nastiness they claim to despise when it suits them and as a result, people have lost faith in their politicians.

As for Corbyn, he's been shown up to be a truly pathetic leader, virtually invisible during the UK's most important debate for decades. When it really mattered he didn't even have the courage of his convictions, deciding it was more expedient to go back on a career lifetime of anti-EU sentiment. A political rabbit caught in headlights.

What needs to happen now is that the result is accepted by all and those on the losing side to avoid talking the UK down and exacerbating what uncertainty will inevitably follow. If they're interested in the UK and its future they'll do just that, if they're not they'll continue talking us down, trying to make the worst happen just so they can say 'we were right'. The decision is made and whatever their view about anything else, anyone who has the UK's interests at heart will now do their best to make the most of what's happened. It'll be interesting to see who decides to take the other route and talk UK PLC down for no good reason.

With any luck there'll be change in the EU - if it doesn't follow now you have to ask just what it is going to take to get the Eurocrats to see sense.

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

So it is. It's dropping still but I hope your right.

Unsarcastically, congrats on the win. I know you probably thought it might never come. :)

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

So the BoE have £250 bn. to shore up Sterling? What happened to the doom and gloom of not being able to cope?

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

That's stabilised things a bit but it's hardly a encouraging sign when the central bank has to step in.

We will see but I think this is going to be a difficult few years. Leave have a lot to deliver too

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

Well the FTSE is doing better than a lot of markets this morning.

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

Leave was a campaign for a single event. As of right now, it no longer exists as an entity.

Both Labour and Conservative were split on this, yet both of them are now going to have to formulate policy that respects the outcome of the referendum.

It's our political class that has a lot to deliver, on something most of them didn't want to happen. Interesting times ahead.

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

I have no idea how others perceive what I've posted here but I am truly sad that it had to come to this. My frustration is with the 'we know best' Eurocrats and politicians who spend far too much time listening to the haves and the elite than those pesky ordinary 'bigots' whose only value appears at election time.

The EU needs to reform and their abject failure to entertain that notion in spite of what's going on all around them is what's led to this. I find it staggering that the people of Europe have any faith in them at all but then I think of FIFA who doled out bribes to buy important votes all around the globe. The EU could and should have been a great thing if only it'd had been able to show a degree of pragmatism and done away with its fixation for homogenisation with faceless Brussels bureaucrats at the top of the tree.

I'd hoped that the very real threat to leave would focus the minds of folks like Juncker but clearly not. Cameron has rightly resigned but do you think any of those who've steered the EU into this mess and seen the EU's second largest contributor leave will have the decency to follow? Not a chance! They're never wrong after all.

That is what's wrong with the EU...

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

Indeed. But the money is there, it doesn't mean it will be used. As you say we'll have to wait and see what happens over the next month or so.

---------- Post added at 09:31 ---------- Previous post was at 09:29 ----------

The single market is still there and we will likely be a part of it if we want to. But as I said earlier the end of the EU is inevitable and the problem will not arise if that happens.

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

It's stabilised but it's the worst drop in the FTSE 250 ever and the biggest drop in any single currency ever. This isn't going to be good for people.

---------- Post added at 09:35 ---------- Previous post was at 09:33 ----------

The politicians who promised it are still there. Let's see the 5% drop in fuel bills (which isnt going amount to anything for any energy we buy outside of sterling) and the extra money for the NHS. Dan Hannan is already making it clear that people expecting immigration to drop will be disappointed.

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

The EU is fundamentally broken. There's a law in politics - if something can't continue, it won't. We may have hastened its demise but when the end comes, it won't have been our doing. The intransigence and mule-headed obsession with federalism amongst the Brussels elite is the root cause.

---------- Post added at 09:38 ---------- Previous post was at 09:36 ----------

Dan Hannan comes at this from the same perspective as me. The structures of the EU have always been fundamentally incompatible with the democratic tradition of the British people. There is a long tradition of euroscepticism in this country that has nothing to do with immigration.

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

Former president of the European Commision Romano Prodi says he expects trade to stay the same after Brexit is completed. All trade agreements we have now will continue as they are.

The EU will have to accept that as a fact he says.

re: [Update] The UK votes to leave the EU
 

That's fine but there is a disconnect between the motivations of the politicians and those who voted for their cause here. Immigration was the biggest concern for them. There will be considerable anger if it's not addressed now, if Leave becomes 'another put up job by the establishment'.