I was expecting Boris or Farage setup a great press conference telling us what they were going to do starting by requiring Cameron resignation, appointing guy X and Y, start a task force to do Z. A message for the market. Even banter like saying they would ask all the European in the UK to register somewhere, tightening the border controls, suspend the naturalisation or permanent residency demand coming from European people, ...

It does not matter about the content, as you said, I would probably not have liked it or found it reasonable. But at least it looks like the guys were a bit prepared to win, that they had put some thought in at least maintaining the appearance that they would push for the stuff they promised or for something.

Specifically, this report on Sky News: https://youtu.be/2Gybrn6XLh0

Jesus man, give it time. I think you have unrealistic expectations here.

The reason those (edit: austrian) parties got the turnout they got is a consequence of years of misgovernment and corruption scandals, real and perceived, and using the european parliament and the commission as kind of "retirement"-option for politicians that need to get out of the light.

The UK already had a very favorable deal with the EU, it is not imaginable that they get a better deal than norway or switzerland, which will amount to "pay the same, have no say".

What "leave"-voters somehow didn't get: free trade, free movement of labor, unrestricted mobilitiy only go one way. So you either have british retirees living in spain for cheap, and spanish workers in britain. Or you don't.

This could play out very well for all of Europe if the EU disintegrates into what it really should have been, a European trade agreement and not much more. But that will have to come from the people of the continent, not their leaders, who are totally sold on the concept of a European superstate. "The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony."

A different way is that Britain (through the mealy mouths of the Boris and Nigel show) is massively conflicted; the ever-popular (Wo)man on the Street is confused and angry from a decade of being bled by "conservatives", and, as often happens, responded to their pain by symbolically punching down. It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters. This is unfortunate, but often happens, especially when there are opportunists looking to ride anger to power.

The problem is that that anger is dangerous and unpredictable. I think the little weasels never expected to actually win, and now they've had their bluff called. Just watch little Boris try to jib and dance around all their lies on his recent appearances - it would be great comedy if this weren't all so dangerous.

My bet is that England (I'm not talking about Britain) doesn't leave; Scotland, however, does eventually get a divorce, and I don't yet know what I think about Ireland.

And the Boris and Nigel show ends like a lot of these little fits - they both learn to not care about their reputations and make out just fine after demonstrating their incompetence at running a proper insurrection.

Just because they don't approach it from some high-minded constitutional-philosophy or European-project perspective doesn't mean that it wasn't about the EU. The biggest issue was immigration, because the EU doesn't allow the British to control immigration into their own country. If you wanted lower immigration, the EU gave you one option: leave the EU. When the continent totally rejected David Cameron's reasonable (and I think insufficient) list of reforms, they confirmed that.

For the Tories who voted Leave, it was also about economic growth because the EU has forced all member countries into a high-regulation (and in my opinion, low-growth) model that's more about protecting inefficient French businesses from competition than about raising the fortunes of the British people. It didn't matter how many elections Conservatives won, because socialism was imposed at the EU level. The EU even ganged up on Ireland for daring to have a low corporate tax rate. No change in the composition of the British delegation to the powerless European Parliament, where they were severely outnumbered anyway, had any chance of ever changing any of this. Again, the only way to even get the chance to vote for free market policies was to leave the EU. Now the British people can decide for themselves what path they will take, a choice which is by no means predetermined.

Many Scottish people feel the same way about their membership in the UK. I think that autonomy within the UK is the answer for them, but they really should leave if they think it's the only way they can control their own destiny. They definitely deserve a second Scottish independence referendum once the Brexit instability calms down.

I'd recommend thinking twice when it comes to blanket statements like that. The only thing I'd be willing to make a blanket statement on is that the mainstream news media has been very manipulative when it comes to pushing their own agendas, and this applies both to the Remain camp and the Leave camp. With that in mind, I couldn't honestly put my finger on what mattered most to the 30,000,000+ voters, though I'd suspect the reasons for Remain and Leave were a lot more diverse than the mainstream media wanted to suggest.

I will note two things: I'm not talking about 30m+ voters; I'm talking about a significant block of them. 'Huge' != all; which you even quoted. A little hard to tell, but you seem to be arguing with a rather stronger claim than I made.

Second, I have zero interest in anyone's "mainstream media" bashing. Fine, whatever, they suck. But unless you're willing to point to specifics and make specific allegations, I consider MSM bashing to be content-free; the political pontificaticator's equivalent of bitching about the referee in sports. (To be clear, of course media actors have agendas. Always have, always will. Depending on what lens you choose, they're people, they're loosely-coupled political operations or they're corporations, and the notion that you'll find impartiality there is either a utopian pipe dream or a cynical, selectively-employed critique made to delegitimize reporting the critic doesn't like.)

reminds about federal vs. state power struggle 155 years ago on another continent - the solution of the issue back then seems to have so far been keeping the separation issue off the table. Another case - after almost 70 years of strong federal power, the moment that federal power weakened, the components of USSR run immediately away.

I mean my point here is like comparing a cable bound agglomeration of smaller ships vs. tightly welded one huge ship of the same mass - the former is nice and enjoyable with some impression of freedom of movement on a quiet summer day until wind and waves start to pickup, and cables are immediately broken while the huge ship wouldn't even notice it with the cruise's patrons continuing to have non-stop party :) Of course the cruise ship have deep hierarchy - the patrons are stratified into different classes, ship's staff subject to tight discipline, a captain having God-like powers and a gun in the safe...

Do you really expect you're going to learn their reasons and motivations by talking with like-minded people in a bubble?

The reality here is the EU doesn't discuss alternatives to staying in the EU, so there's nothing to say until negotiations are well underway. That's fine, the UK has a powerful economy and will just negotiate like every other nation outside the EU does. Is the USA and China hurting for not being EU members? The larger economies have more sway, if anything not being in the EU means a better deal for the UK.

I'm starting to see this the way I saw Communism in the late 80s. The cracks are showing. I don't think these trans-national unions will ever truly work. People want autonomy, have their own identity, have their own politics, and don't want to be bullied by Moscow/Brussels.

Its clear the leftist Europeans made the EU into way much more than it needed to be. All the social issues are now center to it instead of it being a economic participation and common currency to help facilitate business. I hope its not too late to reform before it goes away. Losing 60m people and a $2.6t GDP is a serious loss to the EU. The idea that the UK, who historically has a strong economy and military, will suffer but the EU won't is laughable.

Heck, the EU is still signing checks to millions of Greek pensioners who worked maybe 25 years at do-nothing government jobs and retired at 50 and who will live to be 75-80, being on a pension longer than they've worked! As a Greek-American, I see this stuff first-hand when i visit my motherland. Of course the English are sick of paying for the corrupt EU nations who know how to game the system. How could you not be? Toss in unfettered immigration and its a miracle the EU is even in one piece right now.

I think history will see this a shrewd move, the same way we see Thatcher keeping the pound instead of the Euro as shrewd. The EU might make sense as a French-German-Italian dominated economic forum with smaller member nations getting sweetheart deals from them, but as-is its too expansionist, too ambitious, too tolerant of corruption, and too distracted by non-economic issues. I could certainly see it turning into a G7-like format that removes all the social/immigration stuff and focuses just on economic development.

edit: I prefer replies to drive-by downvotes. HN is very liberal and as such any remotely conservative or moderate view isn't welcome but you guys can at least try to argue your point here.

They can't reassert border controls while negotiating to be part of the common market, and they need the EU far more than the EU needs them. The leave campaign plans were fantasies sold to the electorate, and some frankly very distorted (like 350m for the NHS every week), and they have rowed back on almost all their promises. So yes I think it's fair to say they don't know what they're doing and certainly to say that they have no viable plan. Here is Boris Johnson traducing everything he stood for on the campaign trail in an attempt to court Brussels and the rest of the electorate (attempting for example to claim that the campaign wasn't about immigration after all):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/i-cannot-stress-t...

and being soundly rebuffed the day after:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/27/brussels-rej...

If they reassert border controls UK trade would suffer massively, they simply can't take that risk, and if you read what the chief architects of the leave campaign are now saying, it's clear they know this and are going to have to compromise massively on their promises, including not imposing border controls at all, because that wasn't a very practical idea, and it would lock them out of the EEA.

What makes this guy think the EU will actually even exist five years from now, let alone be something actually desirable to be a part of?

Many people now feel the same about the UK, the markets are certainly behaving as if the UK is damaged goods. Ask citizens in Scotland, Gibraltar, London or Northern Ireland and you'll find they're being taken out of the EU without their consent - all these regions voted to remain, only England and Wales wanted to leave. There is a serious possibility of the UK not existing within 2 years as Scotland wants a referendum. Perhaps Brexit will mean the downfall of the EU, which you apparently consider with relish, but I doubt it, and sincerely hope not, as that would mean almost inevitable war on the continent. I suspect the EU will survive, as long as they can stop petty national concerns (like German domestic politics) from interfering in their treatment of important issues like Greece.

While this London petition was obviously born of frustration and isn't particularly helpful, it does raise an interesting issue - many inhabitants of cities nowadays don't feel any particular allegiance to a given nation state or regime, nor do they want to, the reason they voted remain is simply to keep parochial identity politics out of their lives, and be part of something bigger. I think the really interesting issue here is how nation states and national identities are starting to be blur (they are after all relatively recent invention), and what will replace them as globalisation spreads.