The United Kingdom votes Thursday in a high-stakes referendum on whether to leave the European Union (“Brexit”). A “yes” vote would have deep implications not just for Britain itself, but for everyone from Flemish separatists to Canadian farmers.
What will the Brexit vote decide?
The question seems simple enough: Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
It would be hard to boil it down much more than that. But it’s not at all clear what a “yes” vote would mean.
Anti-Brexit British MPs have made it clear that in the aftermath of a “yes” vote, they would fight to keep as many links with the EU as possible — free trade, open borders, loose immigration controls. Going too far away from British voters’ clear decision to leave the EU, though, risks a “constitutional crisis,” Labour MP Stephen Kinnock acknowledged to the BBC.
(Added to the mix — Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has only a small majority. The British parliamentary system has less rigid party discipline than Canada, so the votes in the aftermath of a Brexit “yes” vote could easily trigger an election. Britain last had a general election in May of 2015.)
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The trick would be to leave the EU, which is a kind of transnational government complete with its own parliament, while preserving the trade relationships that go with it. In principle this shouldn’t be a problem. Norway, for example, is within the European trade area but outside the EU. (There are down sides: to trade with the EU, Norway often has to follow EU standards, but as a non-member gets no say in what those standards are.)
So it could all work out, with goodwill on all sides, but then again it may not.
READ MORE: Our Brexit coverage
There is a school of thought that the EU may want to see Britain punished for leaving, if only as an exercise in damage control. If a post-EU Britain does just fine, easily negotiating a free trade deal with the EU and preserving its status as a financial centre, it may encourage other member-states to leave. (The Netherlands, for example, has its own strong Eurosceptic forces, and Danes rejected closer links with the EU in a referendum last year.)
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“(It) is in the interests of Europe that we do not encourage other EU countries to leave,” former Polish deputy prime minister Leszek Balcerowicz said in January. “The common interest of remaining members is to deter other exits. This should have an impact on the terms Britain gets.”
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Britain would also have to figure out what to do with the mountain of European laws and regulations, covering everything from banking to fisheries, that have come into place over the past couple of decades.
So there’s every possibility of a spectacular tire fire. Which brings us to —
What about Scotland and Northern Ireland?
Britain’s relationship with the EU and the United Kingdom’s continued existence may turn out to be closely linked.
Euroscepticism is an English, rather than a British thing. In Scotland, the “Remain” side has a strong lead.
In 2014, Scots voted to stay in the United Kingdom by about a 10 per cent margin. The result followed some nail-biter polls that seemed to show Scotland headed toward a “yes” vote.
If Scots had to treat a second referendum a few years from now as a forced choice between leaving the EU and leaving the United Kingdom (a choice forced on them by voters in England) could Scottish nationalists make up the extra 200,000-odd votes they would need for independence?
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Another sleeper issue is Northern Ireland, where support for a Brexit “no” vote is even higher than in Scotland. For Northern Ireland, the most visible sign of Brexit would be the rebuilding of the north-south border as a real international border, complete with customs and immigration controls.
In May, former Irish cabinet minister Phil Hogan warned that Brexit could lead to refugee camps like those in Calais, France huddled along the internal Irish border, crammed with people hoping to get across the land border into the U.K.
Former British prime ministers John Major and Tony Blair warned last week that Brexit threatened Northern Ireland’s delicately balanced peace process. (Polls show a sectarian split in Northern Ireland, with Catholics opposing Brexit and Protestants supporting it by higher margins than in England.)
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As in Scotland, voters on any future option would face a forced choice between an option that would let them stay in the EU and an option that would make them leave.
Can I vote?
If you are a British, Irish or a Commonwealth citizen who lives in the U.K. — you can vote in the referendum but you need to be on the electoral register.
U.K. citizens living abroad are eligible to vote if they have been registered to vote there in the last 15 years (at some point since June 2001). You’re also eligible if you were too young to vote 15 years ago, but your parents were registered.
If you’re just starting the paperwork now, though, you’re out of luck to vote from Canada, since the deadlines to either vote by mail or by proxy (naming someone you trust to cast your ballot for you) have passed. Your only option is to go to Britain, show up at a polling station in person on Thursday, and make a case that you’re entitled to cast a ballot.
Expat voting rights have been a major subplot of the Brexit referendum. In May, a court ruling went against two British citizens whose long-term homes are in Belgium and Italy, respectively.
British expats who live in Europe, (or “elsewhere in Europe,” depending on your politics) have a lot at stake in the referendum — they’re only entitled to live elsewhere in the EU because Britain is a member. It’s not clear how many people are affected, but it may be in the high three figures. About 300,000 British citizens live in Spain, for example.
What about the pound?
Uncertainty about the referendum outcome has caused the pound to fluctuate wildly as currency traders place their bets, but temporary instability will be solved, one way or the other, on Thursday. The bigger question is what would happen after a “yes” vote.
“The outcome of the referendum continues to be the largest immediate risk facing U.K. financial markets, and possibly also global financial markets,” said a statement issued by the Bank of England on Thursday.
The pound would fall further, “perhaps sharply,” the central bank warned.
On Wednesday, the Economist Intelligence Unit warned that a “yes” vote would lead to sharply higher unemployment in Britain, and that London risks losing its status as an international financial centre.
What does all this mean to Canada?
Some observers say that Brexit, by keeping interest rates low, might help keep overheated housing markets in Toronto and Vancouver overheated. Others point out coming headaches for Canadian companies that located operations in Britain in part because it was in the EU.
As well, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, the far-reaching trade deal between Canada and the EU finalized in 2014, hasn’t been approved on the European end. Ottawa hopes that CETA will open the EU to increased Canadian farm exports — of 80,000 tonnes of pork annually, for example. But with the EU focused on dealing with the crisis that would follow a Brexit vote, it’s anyone’s guess when they would get around to dealing with a trade agreement with Canada.
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As well, it remains to be seen what a bitter rupture in the EU would mean to NATO. Leaving Canada and the United States aside, the EU and NATO are more or less civilian and military versions of the same alliance. With Europe distracted, and perhaps divided, would Russia feel more able to reassert itself further east in Europe?
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VIDEO: Fri, Apr 22: U.S. President Barack Obama flew to England to wish Queen Elizabeth II a happy 90th birthday, but managed to antagonize plenty of Brits before he even arrived. Jeff Semple explains why Obama is being told to butt out when it comes to the so-called “Brexit.”
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