The Brexit Vacuum

In all of recorded human history, only one person is known to have been exposed to the power of a vacuum and lived to tell the tale.

Jim LeBlanc was working for NASA in the mid-1960s, hired to test one of their prototype lunar spacesuits. Locked into a triple-door chamber, and wearing the suit, LeBlanc seemed to be doing just fine, when disaster struck.

A pressure hose came loose, and LeBlanc was essentially exposed to near-vacuum conditions, albeit briefly. Thankfully, LeBlanc survived the ordeal. Before blacking out due to oxygen deprivation, he distinctly recalls the sensation of saliva evaporating off his tongue.

The political situation, following last Thursday's vote has led to what many call a power vacuum, on both the government's benches, as well as the opposition's side. The Prime Minister, having failed to convince the country to support his plans, intends to resign and a new one will be in place by 9th September 2016, at the last reckoning.

The terrifying ordeal of Jim LeBlanc is a warning from history of what happens in a vacuum. The laws of nature go out the window, and the very things that offer hope and joy boil off into the ether helplessly.

At the time of writing, the government is effectively a zombie administration. The Prime Minister is leaving far sooner than he likely expected to go, and it's unlikely we can expect him to rattle off some revolutionary policies in the remaining 2 months of his premiership.

His successor is an unknown element in all this, and the first of two vacuums emerges for a very good reason. Based off a highly-rated comment on a Guardian website article, it has been suggested that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove never truly wanted a Brexit to be the outcome on June 23rd.

It sounds ridiculous, I know. But when you examine just how fantastically unprepared the Brexit camp have been, you start to realise why. Scotland voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU, along with Northern Ireland, but England and Wales went the other way.

The rules of engagement, concerning the Scottish independence issue have changed dramatically, and the same goes for Northern Ireland, but it doesn't seem to grab the headlines as much. Scotland will fight to retain its status as part of the EU, and in a possible re-run of the so-called indy ref of 2014, Nicola Sturgeon would deliver on the pledge to make Scotland a country in its own right.

Does anybody truly think a potential break-up of the United Kingdom was what Boris Johnson and Michael Gove actually prepared for, when they campaigned for Vote Leave? If the thought had never crossed their minds, they are guilty of making one of the gravest miscalculations in recent political history.

Whoever succeeds Cameron faces the bleak choice: leave the EU, but lose Scotland and Northern Ireland, to the dismay of millions, or abandon invoking Article 50 in a desperate bid to save the UK, but go down in history as the Premier who ignored the will of 17.5m people. Catch 22 on Article 50, it seems.

Now we get to the second vacuum, that is equally as deadly in its ferocity; the gaping black hole of a vacuum at the heart of the Labour Party. It's been just over a year since Jeremy Corbyn rushed to get his name on the 2015 leadership ballot, and he's become one of the most divisive leaders of the Parliamentary Labour Party's 103-year history.

It all began with Hilary Benn being sacked for calling on Mr Corbyn to resign, having failed to convince enough of Labour's support base to back the Remain campaign. 

A cascade of shadow cabinet resignations followed, and now we're at the unprecedented point where all living former Labour leaders, 2 former deputy leaders, the current deputy AND the Prime Minister have called on the leader of the opposition to go. But he refuses to budge, citing the mandate he received from the unions, affiliates and paid-up members, in September 2015.

Mr Corbyn's divisiveness as leader the PLP stems from his refusal to adjust to the gravity of the situation that has gripped the British political system. Mr Cameron's successor is likely to take advantage of Mr Corbyn's crisis of confidence, to call a general election, to shore up Tory dominance in a post-Brexit era.

Mr Corbyn's response has been to refuse responsibility for the vote to Brexit, and Chris Byrant MP (part of the aforementioned cascade of resignations) has been reported to have received no answer, regarding whether Mr Corbyn voted to remain or leave on June 23rd.

A leadership battle is highly likely to emerge, given his recalcitrance to move from his diminishing position of power. Angela Eagle is a potential rival, but anything can happen in the next 24hrs.

Momentum, the group that evolved out of the campaign to help Mr Corbyn into power, has shown repeated contempt for the PLP, and whispers of possible deselection were occasionally seen, when MPs behaved in a way that Momentum didn't like, even before Brexit.

It all becomes an awkward question: who really runs the Labour Party? An outside organisation based around one man, and an army of party members who brand MPs "traitors" when they don't toe the line, or the democratically-elected MPs?

Since the events that unfolded on June 16th, the vitriolic language directed at Labour MPs by sections of the Corbynista movement should make us be as ashamed to be British, just as we are, when we hear stories about anyone who seems remotely foreign being told to go home.

How much longer will our two main parties survive in this vacuum, before someone restores the atmosphere? And if they fail to do so quickly, which party will evaporate into the ether first? The clock is ticking.

UK votes for Brexit

There you have it - the UK has voted in favour of Brexit, after a four-month campaign.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced his intention to resign by early October, to allow a new leader to steer the party and the country through the Conservative Party conference and beyond, to the many months of negotiations to come.

The markets had expected the whole thing to be in the bag for Remain, but by midnight, as results began to come in, that certainty began to diminish. By early morning, panic had set in, and the Pound was down 7% against the Dollar.

Share prices opened sharply lower, as financial institutions took fright. It has been estimated that $2trn has evaporated as a result of the market turbulence of the past day or so. Rating agencies have swooped in, and downgraded their assessments of the UK's creditworthiness, following the vote for Brexit.

As Mr Cameron wrapped up his address outside No10, his voice notably cracked. It was a speech brimming with emotion. Just over 6 years after he walked gleefully into No10, at the helm of a coalition government, Mr Cameron is now facing up to the final days of his stint in office.

Turnout was a respectable 72% up and down the country; turnout of this magnitude hasn't been seen at a general election since the 1990s.

72% turnout equates to about 33m people voting. The Leave option received 17.4m votes, a 51.9% vote share, against Remain, which garnered 16.1m votes or 48.1% of votes.

To put this into perspective, the figures are record-breaking; before June 23rd, the highest number of votes for any one party in UK history had been the shock 14m who voted to keep John Major in No10, during the tumultuous election of 1992.

Fact checking time. Here's a quick run-down of some points:

1.) Claim: the UK has left the EU (FALSE)

The country voted for Brexit, but it's important to remember, the UK is still a member of the EU right at this moment, and will remain so, until the next Prime Minister invokes Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, and the UK completes negotiations. The actual Brexit itself could take a minimum of 2 years.

2.) Claim: the referendum was legally binding (FALSE)

The referendum brought millions out to vote, but it's still not actually legally binding. The AV referendum in 2011 was legally binding, but this was because it concerned a massive overhaul of the UK's voting system. The people have had their say, but ultimate sovereignty remains with the UK Parliament that the people elect to represent them. What happens if Parliament votes to reject leaving the EU?

3.) Claim: £350m a year will now be available for the NHS (UNLIKELY)

Vote Leave repeatedly faced criticism for running with a punchline: £50m per day or £350m per week is sent to the EU, and if we leave, the government can keep the cash, and spend it on the NHS. Adjusting for rebates and EU spending on subsidies and so on, the figure is likely half that at best.

Nigel Farage himself has admitted the pledge is a "mistake", despite having claimed on Question Time that the money would be better spent "helping the communities of Britain".

4.) Claim: Brexit could result in the UK breaking apart (TRUE)

Scotland and Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly in favour of staying, and Nicola Sturgeon has stated that a second independence referendum is "on the table". In the event of one, Scotland is highly likely to be granted its independence, overturning the outcome almost 2 years ago. Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister has called for a border poll, reflecting the fact that NI is the only part of the UK that shares a border with another EU member state.

The story is simple: Brexit isn't quite the sunlit upland people were told it was going to be, and significant numbers of voters are now starting to question whether the Leave campaign's pledges can be upheld. Then there's the question about whether the UK will come out of this whole ordeal intact.

Looking ahead, here are two intrigiuing theories to consider:

Our next PM might just proceed to invoke Article 50, and the Brexit goes ahead, resulting in the break-up of the UK. 300 years of union will go up in a puff of smoke, just like that. England and Wales plod on, and that's that.

The other theory is not immediately apparent, but worth bearing in mind. Our next PM might just reject the idea of Brexit altogether for the sake of keeping the UK intact. In doing so, they would be sacrificing themselves and the Conservatives, going against the wishes of the 52%.

Whether it's Boris Johnson, Theresa May or Francis Urqhart, Mr Cameron's successor will have a massive in-tray on day one.

Market panic, as Brexit takes lead in handful of polls

£80bn wiped off London stock markets in four days, as odds on Brexit jump.

Photo by Images Money (Flickr) / CC BY

Nine days out from one of the most anticipated votes in post-war British history, markets are in a state of fear, as a flurry of opinion polls indicated that the UK might exit the European Union on June 23rd.

Today alone, pension pots will have felt a pinch, as the FTSE 100 shed 2% of its value. Betting markets have been fairly relaxed about the likelihood of a Brexit, having claimed just over the weekend that it was only a 25% possibility.

The price of Gold in GBP has jumped to £900 per ounce in recent days, as a reflection of investors seeking hard assets, during a period of economic uncertainty. To compound all this, Rupert Murdoch's best-selling newspaper the Sun has come out in favour of Brexit.

Mr Murdoch's editorial decision is intriguing, given that the Sun has the habit of coming out in support of the party that would go to win every election since 1979.

Where did this sudden tumble in markets begin? Cue an avalanche of statistics from multiple polling agencies over the weekend. They were enough for some to consider that the calculus has shifted. Now betting odds on a Brexit have risen to roughly 40%. 

However, Number Cruncher Politics, an independent psephology stats site claims the gap is just a bit wider.

NCP has seen the likelihood of a Brexit rise in recent days, but it estimates that there's actually a 33% likelihood of a Brexit. It is important to note that NCP was hailed for foreseeing the controversy over inaccurate polling in the run-up to the May 2015 general election.

So where does this leave us? The most important things to consider, when reading an opinion poll on the EU referendum are the following: 

1.) Does the poll include or exclude voters from Northern Ireland? 

If NI voters are excluded, there's a chance the poll is skewed somewhat. Polls carried out exclusively inside Northern Ireland find support for remaining in the EU far exceeding support for a Brexit.

2.) Polls are the political equivalent of breath on a pane of glass; things happen and views change

Peter Kellner, former President of YouGov writes in the Staggers that past referendums in the UK have tended to see a last-minute boost in support towards the status quo, whatever that may be.

The headlines are filled with a curious paradox; on one hand, people are confident a Brexit is so unlikely, that they're willing to bet money on Britain staying, and yet on the other, the markets are so jittery.

Only nine days to go, till the biggest poll of them all comes to town.