The first county of the 382 that was called as the European referendum results were announced in the early hours of June 24 was Gibraltar that voted overwhelmingly for ‘Remain’. Then came Newcastle upon Tyne in the northeast of the United Kingdom. It returned a ‘Remain’ vote, but with a smaller lead than expected.
The first shocker was Sunderland in the northeast that returned a massive ‘Leave’ vote of 67.6 per cent. And with Sunderland came the flood. County after county returned ‘Leave’, with ‘Remain’ victories in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland simply not big enough to halt the force of the ‘Leave’ wave.
By morning the picture became clear. The U.K. had voted in a momentous rejection of the country’s 40-year relationship with the European Union (EU). In the exercise, 52 per cent of voters representing 17.4 million people chose to leave the EU. This was a million plus lead over the 16.1 million who voted to stay, representing 48 per cent of voters.
Regional preferences Clear regional preferences emerged. Apart from Scotland, London and Northern Ireland, the other regions — like Wales, the west and east Midlands, Yorkshire and the entire eastern board of the country — voted en masse for ‘Leave’.
The outcome was received with shock by political leaders supporting ‘Remain’ from all parties — the Conservatives, the Labour Party, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Liberal Democrats — and by Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union (EU) institutions. And it had immediate repercussions. David Cameron, whose decision it was to call the referendum, announced that he was stepping down from office of the Prime Minister in October. The financial markets went into a spin. The FTSE fell steeply as the pound dropped to its lowest since 1985.
The results were quickly recognised by more perceptive sections of the Labour Party as something deeper than just a popular fear of immigration, a bogey created by the far-Right section of the ‘Leave’ campaign, especially the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) led by Nigel Farage.
‘Defiance of Westminster’ Dianne Abbot, a senior Labour Member of Parliament, characterised the vote as the voice of the poor and dispossessed, disconnected from the political elite, who had suffered the consequences of the Conservative party’s austerity measures. The vote, she said, was “the roar of defiance of Westminster”.
The Conservative Party, which was split down the middle over the referendum, faces a new leadership contest, and the likelihood of former Mayor Boris Johnson, a major figure of the ‘Leave’ campaign becoming the next Prime Minister, is high.
The referendum vote speaks of the desertion of the Labour Party’s mass support base from the leadership’s position supporting ‘Remain’. The blame for this is already being laid at the door of Jeremy Corbyn, who his critics allege was a closet ‘Brexiteer’ who did not campaign wholeheartedly in support of the ‘Remain’ campaign. Mr. Corbyn had taken a nuanced position, stressing that a ‘Remain’ option without reform of the EU would not reverse the onslaught of austerity policies on the working people.
