For the Brits: When will BREXIT referendum happen ?

[broncofan]

Someone I know has spent most of the day on the phone with his broker buying stock at bargain prices.

The wealthier someone is the easier it is to withstand a financial shock or a decrease in the nominal value of their stock portfolio. It's much harder to tell someone who has savings from 5 decades of hard work tied up in a stock portfolio that the market will correct or that a ten percent overnight decrease in their net worth is just an overreaction of the market. As you indicate volatility presents a risk but also an opportunity for people with lots of capital.

[peejaye]

But peejaye, who do you think is going to benefit from this result if not millionaires? Someone I know has spent most of the day on the phone with his broker buying stock at bargain prices. The only way you will become a millionaire is when it costs a million to buy a pint of milk!

No one knows what will happen. People are sick of the way this country as been ran by wealthy public schoolboys for so long. Especially up here in the North of England.
Don't panic, chill out and enjoy the footy.

[flabbybody]

I'm not shedding too many tears for wealthy Brits. Thanks to BREXIT they'll be much fewer of them

[chupapau]

I guess of one thing both the Leave and the Remain camp positively can agree on, and that is that Cameron is a complete and utter twat.

[broncofan]

I guess of one thing both the Leave and the Remain camp positively can agree on, and that is that Cameron is a complete and utter twat.

One thing I found interesting about this process is the demand for politicians to resign out of honor. An American politician could be a corpse and would still be grasping the reins of power until there was a formal impeachment process.

[flabbybody]

Now the right wing wackos in France have been emboldened
Welcome to FREXIT.
Goodbye EU

[Stavros]

Now the right wing wackos in France have been emboldened
Welcome to FREXIT.
Goodbye EU

The French vote in two phases in an exhaustive ballot, on the second run if there is a straight rub-off between Le Pen and the Conservative or Socialist candidate, the French will unite to keep Le Pen and her party out of government.

[Stavros]

24 hours after the referendum result the situation is not clear, and is not going to be clear for some time.

In the UK-
-Cameron has said he will not lead negotiations on Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and the assumption is that the new leader of the Conservative Party will do it. But it remains an assumption because the Tories are deeply divided on the EU and it is not clear if the person they choose in early October will command the respect of the House. Boris Johnson may appear the logical candidate, but while popular in the party, he has no popularity in the Parliamentary party he has only been a member of since 2015, and there are no outstanding candidates to replace David Cameron who are also from the Brexit faction, and no 'unity' candidates either, unless Theresa May is thought the 'safest' pair of hands who will appeal to both sides of the divided party.

-In such cases a vote of No Confidence could well force the new leader to call a General Election, if not in October then in November, maybe even on the Thursday following the US Presidential election.

-The problem with this is that in the current state of the country, a general election result may not produce a House of Commons with one party in overall control. On current evidence the Scottish National Party would remain the main party in Scotland, but while I don't see Labour regaining any of its seats there, the powerful performance of Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson could see the Tories win some seats in Scotland, complicating any moves to a new referendum there on Independence.
But with Labour so weak as a party -and as with the Tories we don't know who will lead the party if Corbyn is ousted at the September party conference- and having lost so many votes to the UKIP position, the nightmare scenario is of a Commons where the two largest parties are the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party with Labour and UKIP making up the rest but no consensus on how to form a government or who should be in it. Even if there is no general election, and even if there is and the Tories are the largest party, just as it was Parliament that took the UK into the Common Market, Parliament must vote on the exit and could either reject it outright, or as is more likely, have to vote on key provisions which in some cases may not meet the demands of UKIP or some Tories for a 'complete break' with the EU.

-For example, last night Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP made it clear on the BBC Newsnight programme that he did not want the UK to leave the single market and that this also means retaining the right of free movement of labour. To his gobsmacked interviewer he had to explain the new arrangement would not allow free movement of citizens, but free movement of Labour would not be a problem. If UKIP were to be a force in the Commons would this pragmatic compromise be acceptable?

-An additional problem is that the markets do not like uncertainty, but that it what we will have for next six months and as this also has an impact on other economies, the EU may try to force the pace of the UK's exit, although I am not sure how they can do this as I don't believe they can force a UK government to take action on Article 50. Either way, the Bank of England may indeed have to spend some or even all of its £250bn contingency fund to prop up the pound and the banks. But what happens if all that money is spent and there is no sign of stable government with coherent policies?

-There is a claim that Brexit never expected to win, and that is why they have no plan and the Tory leaders of it are calling for Article 50 to be delayed rather than be invoked right now. The long-term status of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar must also be dealt with, while a petition calling for a second referendum to be held with a threshold of legitimacy at a turnout of 75% and vote either way of at least 65% has received 100,000 signatures so must be debated in Parliament. Meanwhile, it appears all other business in the Commons has ground to a halt and that the EU will be the only issue on the agenda for the foreseeable future.

-In other words, the referendum is over, the trading has yet to begin, but nobody knows what is being traded, or who is going to lead the talks. One imagines Boris Johnson morphing into Oliver Hardy and whacking his old Etonian rival Laurel Cameron over the head as he explodes- Here's another fine mess you've got me into!

[flabbybody]

Thank you for the update Stavros...I think
As Churchill stated: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others"

[Stavros]

As expected, every day brings a new cluster of developments most of which appear to show that the 'popular vote' -as in, voted for by the people- has become the most unpopular (as in, don't like, wish it hadn't happened) vote in living memory.

-The crisis in Labour has taken a new twist as shadow Cabinet MP Hillary Benn has been sacked for trying to organise a leadership coup against Corbyn, Heidi Alexander another shadow Cabinet MP has resigned, some others expected to follow this weekend, with Corbyn's leadership on the line at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party next Tuesday.

-As expected, Theresa May is emerging as the 'stop Boris' candidate in the Tory party, and while Chancellor George Osborne's political ambitions are now dust, he is probably being asked not to resign as turmoil on the markets is expected to start again on Monday and if he resigns that will send a message to the markets that the government has lost control of economic and fiscal policy making.

-Anna Soubry, the Conservative government's small business minister, has said Boris Johnson never believed in an 'independent Britain' outside the EU but joined the Leave campaign to get one over on David Cameron not expecting Leave to win.

-The Independent neatly summaries the issues the Leave campaign said were of cardinal importance that have been magically dismissed, as summed up with staggering and insulting arrogance by an arrogant and insulting Tory Liam Fox (who was sacked as Defence Minister a few years ago for running an independent foreign policy unit in his department):

“A lot of things were said in advance of this referendum that we might want to think about again,” said the Conservative former Defence Minister Liam Fox.

Thus:
-the immigration issue was not that important, as free movement of labour will carry on, if the EU allows the UK to remain in the single market;
-applying for Article 50 terms of withdrawal need not happen soon, if ever (which is the implication made by Liam Fox);
-Nigel Farage also told Good Morning Britain that the claim written on the side of the Vote Leave Battle Bus – that leaving the EU would release £350m a week that could be spent on the NHS – was "a mistake". "It wasn’t one of my adverts," he said.

The petition for a second referendum has now acquired more than 2 million signatures and will be debated but at the moment it looks unlikely to materialise into a second referendum.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...s-7103076.html

Meanwhile Donald Trump in Scotland has been seen entertaining Rupert Murdoch...I wonder which one of them has made the most money from the UK stock market's bargain basement sales?