An interesting point I'm not seeing reported yet

[Suff]

Is that despite a few wounds to be licked, the Tory party is now no longer split over Europe. Yes there will be a little bloodletting due to the acrimonious nature of the campaign. But. In the long run. The Tories come out of this far stronger than they went into it.

Gone are the politics of the last 40 years and the EU divide in the Tory party. Now they have to lead to run and manage the country for itself and not for it's "contribution" to the EU.

Expect, by the next election, a fully healed and very robust Tory party. What it will face in competition is another matter. Also the Tories only have one Westminster seat in Scotland...

The entire face of UK politics has changed overnight and whilst Labour may have fought a lacklustre and not very engaging campaign in the EU referendum, like them or loathe them, it was the Tories who gave us the chance to vote on it. Not Labour.

We have nearly 4 years to the next election. We will be out of the EU, one way or another and the Scots will have done whatever they are going to do.

The next 3 and a bit years are going to be highly interesting and the next UK election is going to be one of the most prominent in my entire life. It won't be the first, in my life, which is not overshadowed by membership of the "Europe Club"; but it will be one of the most momentous.

Unless the Tories make a total and complete hash of our extraction from the EU, I can't see Labour doing supremely well.

As for the Lib Dems, well, they were Europhiles with a capital E. I'm wondering how they will spin that?

[Workingman]

That is not how it is being portrayed in what I have just seen on the BBC.

Somebody will challenge dumb Dave (Nikki Morgan?) and the opposition will move a no confidence vote, there will be GE by the end of the year, or early 2017. Everything is up for grabs.

No criticism of Leave, but the ramifications of the result have not taken long to emerge:

£120 bn knocked off stocks and shares

The £ lowest since 1985

Cameron gone

Motion of 'no confidence' in Corbyn

Nicola wants another referendum

Referendums called for in France, Italy and the Netherlands. Sweden and Denmark could follow with Ireland having a meeting

All EU stock markets are down

And the Tories are somehow going to manage to heal everything?

Brexit do not even have a known negotiator or what he or she could achieve if they had.

Gimme a break.

[Suff]

Brexit was a referendum campaign.

The government is Conservative. It is the government who needs to lead and it needs to find a replacement for the PM who will lead those negotiations. If someone raises a vote of no confidence then the Tories will rally and see it off. They have an overall majority and _nobody_ in the Tory party wants an election right now.

The EU can bump it's gums all it likes about invoking Article 50. They made it so that only the government of the state that wants to leave can enact it for very good reason. It will be invoked at a time of our choosing not theirs. After all, there is no rush, France and Germany won't agree to Anything being finalised before the elections next year.

The press it talking total ballcocks right now and they need to stop taking and start listening....

The £ is down at €1.23, yet it was virtually at 1:1 in 2009/10. We've been a hell of a lot worse in the crisis. The institutions are already starting to talk about preparations made, no real shock, moves in place.

I'm not even really listening to the press very much they're having a screamfest based on what their political affiliation is. not worth it. I'll start having a look at the detailed analysis some time Tuesday or Wed when the pure BS speculation has died down a bit...

[Workingman]

The 'present' government might be Conservative, but it is in crisis.

Cameron has done a long term resignation, but he will be challenged long before he wants to leave, it is already happening. Any result leaves them, the Cons, open to attack.

They might be able to see off a 'no confidence' vote from within, but they have no control over the other parties. If those parties sense a weakness there will be daggers drawn and we will have a GE.

I think that David Davis, Leave campaigner, is a good bet for the Tories. He is passionate, level-headed and avoids the hyperbole. As a Remainer even I would vote for him.

[Suff]

So long as the Tories maintain a majority in government, they're not going to let any of the outside parties railroad them into an election.

You can't have a vote of no confidence without Tories helping and none of them will commit suicide that way. They may want a new PM and they will get a new PM, but they won't throw the government away to do it.

There may be a leadership challenge long before the tory conference in October, but, then again, there may not. All the Tories, remain and leave are singing from the same hymn sheet, no need to rush just because the EU is having a tantrum and throwing it's toys out of the pram; because someone dared to find themselves a better bet than the EU and let in the idea that it might be a good thing.

[cromwell]

Touching briefly on the BBC...

It was only to be expected that BBC reporters would have funereal expressions on their faces after Thursday's vote, but our own dear Look North from Leeds is just past belief.

Their political editor Len Tingle was asserting that "people have believed what Boris Johnson told them", whilst Spencer Stokes in Barnsley said something to the effect that people "didn't realise" what they had done.

There have been some really good articles about why people in disadvantaged communities voted the way they did.

Suzanne Moore in the Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... s#comments

A video by John Harris of the Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... o#comments

But Look North and the BBC in general are peddling the big lie. "You believed Johnson" - nobody I've spoken to has even mentioned Boris Johnson.
"You don't realise what you have done". Maybe not, but the whole thrust of this argument is that it is patronising and elitist - exactly the qualities that people were sticking two fingers up at! And the BBC and the Labour party don't even realise it!

Honestly, give me strength.

We may all live to rue the day. Certainly Junker and Schultz of the EU are reacting like a spurned lover - "Nobody leaves ME, bitch!" But eurosceptics all over Europe now have the wind in their sails and no amount of sloganeering about le 'project European is going to alter that.

What really bothers me is how divided we are as a nation now. Not good.

[TheOstrich]

I watched that John Harris video on the Potteries before the referendum - very telling. He's one of the few Guardian pundits I have any time for, although he did let the neutrality mask slip in the last 30 seconds.

Interestingly, I think the BBC West Midlands tone after the result has been a bit more muted. I believe there has been a genuine shock that metropolitan Birmingham, the largest "counting constituency" in the country, voted narrowly to Leave. That result, I suspect, was the trigger for the Beeb calling it for Leave on the night.