Brexit vote: “Leave” wins stunning victory, but Scotland and N. Ireland vote to Remain

A major­i­ty of vot­ers in the Unit­ed King­dom of Great Britain have decid­ed to break up with the Euro­pean Union, British mass media out­lets are pro­ject­ing, stun­ning finan­cial mar­kets and pun­dits who had pre­dict­ed a vic­to­ry for the Remain cam­paign when all was said and done. At around mid­night East­ern time and 9 PM Pacif­ic, the Leave side had a lead of over 700,000 votes, and was win­ning hand­i­ly in Eng­land and Wales, but los­ing Scot­land, North­ern Ire­land, and Gibraltar.

U.K. Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron has yet to issue any state­ment or react to the ref­er­en­dum. Sev­er­al author­i­ties have yet to release their counts, though the num­ber of areas that have yet to report in is dwin­dling, which is why the BBC and oth­er media out­lets have start­ed mak­ing projections.

Britain’s cur­ren­cy, the pound ster­ling, has already fall­en sharply, drop­ping to lev­els not seen since 1985, and major loss­es are expect­ed when the Lon­don stock mar­ket opens for busi­ness in a few hours. Asian mar­kets are already in bad shape.

The notion that the Unit­ed King­dom will soon become “inde­pen­dent” may be a short-lived fan­ta­sy. There may not be a Unit­ed King­dom at all for very much longer. What tonight’s vote remind­ed us is that the UK is a deeply divid­ed coun­try, despite its name. Eng­land and Wales have endorsed a breakup with the Euro­pean Union, but Scot­land and North­ern Ire­land vot­ed deci­sive­ly to Remain.

Britain’s exist from the Euro­pean Union is almost sure to revi­tal­ize the effort in Scot­land to leave the Unit­ed King­dom. Asked to react to the results of the vote, Scot­land’s First Min­is­ter Nico­la Stur­geon did not imme­di­ate­ly call for anoth­er Scot­tish inde­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum, but did point out that a major­i­ty of Scots were in favor of stick­ing with the EU, in con­trast to the Eng­lish:

Har­ry Pot­ter author J.K. Rowl­ing cer­tain­ly shares this view. She tweet­ed, “Scot­land will seek inde­pen­dence now. [David] Cameron’s lega­cy will be break­ing up two unions. Nei­ther need­ed to happen.”

Mean­while, in North­ern Ire­land, the pro-Irish reuni­fi­ca­tion polit­i­cal par­ty Sinn Fein declared: “The British gov­ern­ment has for­feit­ed any man­date to rep­re­sent eco­nom­ic or polit­i­cal inter­ests of peo­ple in North­ern Ireland.”

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma is cur­rent­ly in Cal­i­for­nia and sched­uled to fly to Seat­tle tomor­row for fundrais­ing events. The White House has not released a state­ment on the vote, owing to the late­ness of the hour, the fact that not all the votes have been count­ed yet, and the like­li­hood that Oba­ma has not yet called Cameron to dis­cuss the fall­out with him. But there will prob­a­bly be a state­ment com­ing tomorrow.

“The Pres­i­dent has been briefed on the incom­ing returns in the UK ref­er­en­dum, and he will con­tin­ue to be updat­ed by his team as the sit­u­a­tion war­rants,” said a spokesman for the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. “We expect the Pres­i­dent will have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to Prime Min­is­ter Cameron over the course of the next day, and we will release fur­ther com­ment as soon as appropriate.”

There is expect­ed to be imme­di­ate fall­out from the “Brex­it” in the Unit­ed States, as the Wall Street Jour­nal’s Ian Tal­ley explains:

Britain’s exit is expect­ed to jolt the U.S. econ­o­my, like­ly rat­tling restive equi­ty mar­kets and dri­ving up the val­ue of the dol­lar. It could also weak­en U.S. diplo­mat­ic lever­age in Europe and upend the cor­po­rate strate­gies of U.S. com­pa­nies based in London.

Top finance offi­cials say the dam­age from the so-called Brex­it alone isn’t like­ly to be enough to nudge the U.S. into a con­trac­tion. But as skit­tish investors pull out of U.K. and Euro­pean mar­kets and pour into the safe­ty of U.S. assets, a falling pound and euro could cause the dol­lar to surge, fur­ther sup­press­ing demand for Amer­i­can exports.

Ire­land will also be sig­nif­i­cant­ly affected.

‘The Gov­ern­ment notes the out­come of the UK EU ref­er­en­dum this morn­ing,” the Irish gov­ern­ment said in a state­ment. “This result clear­ly has very sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for Ire­land, as well as for Britain and for the Euro­pean Union. The Gov­ern­ment will meet lat­er this morn­ing to reflect on the result. Fol­low­ing that meet­ing, the Taoiseach will make a pub­lic statement.”

UPDATE, BREAKING NEWS, 12:28 AM: Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron has deliv­ered a state­ment out­side of Num­ber 10 Down­ing Street accept­ing the results of the ref­er­en­dum and announc­ing that he will resign as Prime Min­is­ter in Octo­ber. Thus trig­gers a lead­er­ship con­test in the gov­ern­ing Tory Par­ty. It will like­ly also lead to new elec­tions in the U.K. with­in the next year.

Said Cameron:

This post will be updat­ed with fresh devel­op­ments.