The EU Referendum - The political impact

Part of the EU Referendum series.

The country has been left with no leadership at a time when we need it the most. Both the Conservative and the Labour parties are disintegrating into leadership battles and this will only increase the market instability.

David Cameron has given notice that he will resign by October and will not trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty as he believes that it should be the next Prime Minister who will enter into the negotiations and therefore that Prime Minister should decide when to formally decide to leave. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, and the rest of the Leave campaign, seem to not be in a hurry to trigger Article 50 as it appears that they do not really have a plan for what the future would look like post-exit. To be honest, it appears that no one had a plan for what happened post-exit.

It is believed that there is a coup underway within the Labour party to oust Jeremy Corbyn as leader, according to some Jeremy Corbyn sabotaged the Remain campaign because he did not really support membership of the EU. Whether this is true or not he failed to really become a prominent figure in the Remain camp as he made the choice to not share a platform with the Conservative party.

Scotland has an interesting position as it may well have the ability to veto the decision to leave the UK but given the SNP are in power in Scotland there is a high chance that if we trigger Article 50 Scotland will demand a new independence referendum and will probably win.

There are significant implications about what happens to Northern Ireland too with people talking about adding border controls between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and calls by Sinn Fein calling for a referendum on Irish unification.

The political upheaval could tear apart the United Kingdom and worryingly could even tear apart the EU as there are many anti-EU parties like Front National in France led by Marine Le Pen who are also now calling for their own in/out referenda. To protect themselves from the break-up of the EU it is likely that the EU will have to be harsh on the UK, even if it is against their economic interests, to make an example of the United Kingdom.