Britain may be the first major domino to fall
Britain has chosen to leave the world’s largest common market, with 508 million residents, including 65 million Britons. The free movement of labour, capital, goods and services between the European Union and Britain will now be severely curtailed. Half of Britain’s exports, sold on Europe’s common market, will need to be renegotiated. Ironically, this will require an escalation of the bureaucratic zeal that Brussels was accused of by the Leave majority.
London’s status as a global financial centre is now imperilled. British parochialism and isolationism reflecting nostalgia for yesteryear’s “Britannia rules the waves” is viewed with suspicion worldwide.
The cataclysm of Britain’s exit from the European Union poses ruinous aftershocks for global financial and currency markets. It will negatively affect daily life in Britain. One example is less medical care in communities where general practice is currently expertly and efficiently delivered by locum doctors from Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe after hours and on weekends.
Welcome to the brave new, unlikely to be better, world.