Randall Forsyth devotes the latest Barron’s cover story to potential long-term consequences of Britons’ vote to exit the European Union.
No man is an island, wrote John Donne, yet his fellow Britons have voted to make emphatic their island status, separate and apart from continental Europe, politically as well as geographically. The reverberations from the United Kingdom’s referendum to leave the European Union, however, were felt far beyond the British Isles.
Markets and economies around the globe are likely to continue to be buffeted by the shock waves from Thursday’s Brexit vote, which slammed stocks and sent currencies gyrating and bond yields plunging. Even as markets shuddered, with some major ones down more than 3% and bank stocks tumbling by double digits in the wake of the referendum’s outcome, this wasn’t a financial event like the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Rather, it was a political event, says Felix Zulauf, a longtime member of the Barron’s Roundtable. Brexit is not an isolated happening, the head of Zulauf Asset Management e-mailed from his offices in Zug, Switzerland. It is part of a swing against the political establishment. Indeed, “the disintegration process of the EU is beginning,” he contends.
This weekend will see elections in Spain—which Zulauf notes hasn’t had a government in two years—that could produce a coalition of socialist and antiestablishment parties. Brexit contagion could result in similar referendums on the Continent, with the Netherlands probably coming first, he adds.
In France, Marine Le Pen, head of the right-wing National Front party, called for the same vote there. Populist parties in Denmark, Sweden, and Italy also favor similar referendums. Indeed, the U.K.’s vote to leave the EU could lead to the breakup of the U.K. itself. A second referendum, on Scottish independence, could follow, while Sinn Fein is calling for a vote on the reunification of Ireland, leaving mainly “Little England” (along with “littler” Wales).
All of which suggests “political chaos and turmoil for several years,” Zulauf continues. The divorce of the U.K. from the EU will take at least two years. British Prime Minister David Cameron announced his intention to resign after the Brexit vote, leaving the task to his successor, who won’t be known until the Conservative Party picks a new leader at its convention next fall. And there’s the small matter of the U.S. elections in November.
