Britain votes in historic referendum on EU

London / AFP

Millions of Britons voted on Thursday in a bitterly-fought, knife-edge referendum that could tear up the island nation’s EU membership and spark the greatest emergency of the bloc’s 60-year history.
A record 46.5 million voters registered to decide Britain’s future in the 28-nation European Union, which was born out of a determination to unite in lasting peace after the carnage of two world wars.
Across much of southeast England, many voters braved torrential rain to have their say in a battle fought on two main fronts: immigration and the economy.
The once-in-a-generation referendum asked: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”
In one of the last opinion polls before the vote, “Remain” took a lead with 48 percent against “Leave” on 42 percent. The rest were undecided, according to the telephone survey by ComRes for the Daily Mail and ITV News.
Two other polls published on the eve of the referendum—both conducted over the Internet—had put the “Leave” camp ahead by one or two percentage points, well within the margin of error.
“Leave” advocates said a Britain cut loose the EU will be able to rein in high levels of immigration and take back power from Brussels, while the “Remain” camp warned of a huge economic shock if Britain abandons the bloc.

‘Silly to leave’
World financial markets banked on a “Remain” victory. In Tokyo trade, sterling briefly hit $1.4844—its highest level so far this year—while stock markets in London, Paris and Frankfurt climbed in early trade.
Financial institutions reinforced their trading teams to cope with the prospect of frantic trading through the day and the world’s leading central banks say they wee ready to react to any eventuality. Using the hashtag #ivoted, some people posted mobile phone images of their completed ballot papers on Twitter. Election authorities had asked voters to refrain from taking selfies. “Our polling station had a queue of people waiting to get in at 7 am—first time anyone can remember that on polling day,” voter Nick Turner in northwestern Cumbria said on Twitter.
Under clear skies in Glasgow, Scotland, people were waiting to cast a ballot.
“It would be silly to leave,” the first voter, Gemma Rosario, a 24-year-old office worker, said. “Being in the EU is an advantage for Scotland.”
The often acrimonious, deeply emotional campaign has exposed a gulf between Britons on the country’s four-decade membership of the European club.
The Thursday editions of British newspapers captured the drama of voting day. “Independence day” was the headline of the pro-Brexit Sun, while The Times called it a “Day of reckoning”. Leading Brexit backer Boris Johnson, a former London mayor who is widely touted as a future prime minister, insisted the “Leave” campaign was on the brink of victory.
“I do think that we are on the verge, possibly, of an extraordinary event in the history of our country and indeed in the whole of Europe,” Johnson said in a final scramble for support on Wednesday. Prime Minister David Cameron, who faces calls to resign if there is a “Leave” victory, voted early in Westminster, close to his residence at 10 Downing Street. At his final rally on Wednesday, he implored people to stay in the bloc. “Winston Churchill didn’t give up on European democracy… and we shouldn’t walk away,” he said.

Britain and the EU in facts and figures

London / AFP

Money is at the heart of many a battle and Thursday’s referendum on whether Britain should stay in the European Union or quit is no exception.
Voters were hit with a blizzard of statistics from the “Remain” and “Leave” camps during the campaign, often produced selectively to boost their side of the argument.
Here are some of the facts and figures that were disputed in the run-up to the vote:

Britain’s contribution to EU budget
“Leave” campaigners claim it is £350 million ($510 million, 455 million euros) a week.
But that is a gross figure that does not include the rebate famously won by prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984.
With the rebate stripped out, the figure is £280 million a week based on 2014 data, according to Iain Begg, a research professor at the London School of Economics’ European Institute, in a study entitled “So how much does Britain pay the EU?”

Brussels subsidies
In return, Britain receives some £6 billion in subsidies, notably to the agriculture and scientific research industries. “Remain” campaigners say this support would go if Britain pulled out, while “Leave” campaigners say British money would be better spent directly by the government.

EU immigration
Immigration from the EU proved to be one of the key battlegrounds of the campaign. The total number of EU migrants living in Britain doubled between 2004 and 2015 to three million people, according to the Migration Observatory of Oxford University.

Trade
The EU as a whole is by far Britain’s biggest trading partner. In 2015, 44 percent of Britain’s exports went to other EU states, from which it imported 53 percent of its goods, according to government figures.

Jobs
The British government says three million jobs are directly or indirectly linked to trade with other EU countries. The government says the figure is based on the assumption that “the share of UK employment linked to trade with the EU is equal to the share of total UK value added (GDP) generated in the production of goods and services exported to the EU”.