The ripples from yesterday's Brexit vote are only now starting. The UK may break up itself, now.
The success of the Brexit vote has already caused Scotland's independence party to start talking again about that country's secession from the United Kingdom. A Scotland referendum two years ago to declare separation garnered 45 percent of the vote, so failed. (I remember reading then that a higher percentage of Englanders supported Scottish secession than Scots did!)
But why stop with Scotland? Today, some Londoners themselves are calling for breaking away from England and re-entering the EU as a small city-state. More than 46,000 Londoners have already signed a petition for a referendum to that effect.
What is unclear from reports is which London they refer to. London has never been a single political entity. What we think of a London actually consists of the City of London and Greater London, aka the London Metropolis.
The city of London dates to early in the region's Roman era and is also a county in itself. By ancient law and tradition, the British monarch may not enter the City of London without advance permission from the Lord Mayor of the City of London, an office separate from (and much older than) the Mayor of London. (BTW, the adjacent City of Westminster also holds equal city status with the City of London.)
"The City," as the City of London is called, is small, only 1.1 square miles, which is to say, a little more than 700 acres. Its population is about 7,000.
Despite its small size, it is the financial center of Metro London.
I am guessing that separatists are referring, though, to Metro London for two reasons:
1. Seven times more people have petitioned for a referendum than live in The City,
2. Metro London's Mayor Sadiq Khan has already been publicly asked whether he'd like to be President Khan.
The ripples go on from there throughout not just the UK, but the Commonwealth. The Brexit is likely to reignite the long-simmering dispute between Spain and Britain over Gibraltar. There is already a "Frexit" movement building across the channel in France. (And yes, I just made that word up and will take credit for it henceforth! Also "Franxit.")
As Bachman-Turner Overdrive once sang, "You ain't seen nothing yet."
This is almost certainly correct, too: "Brexit is an English nationalist revolution"
Make no mistake: this is an English nationalist revolution.Hardly covered by American media, a nationalist movement in England has been growing for many years.
At its heart are all of the things the English used to see as the province of other, less rational, nations: identity, difference, the deep passions of belonging and resentment. It did not, in the end, matter that no one on the Brexit side could articulate a coherent economic case for leaving the EU. It did not even matter that those who will take over from David Cameron will be right-wing market fundamentalists whose policies will deepen the very inequalities and alienation that have driven working class voters towards Leave. It did not even matter that the very entity in whose name independence is being claimed — the United Kingdom — is surely doomed by Brexit.
See also: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/london-wants-independence-spain-wants-gibraltar-back-the-world-reacts-to-brexit
Update, humor break:
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