LONDON: Europe woke up to bad news on Friday as Britain voted to leave the European Union, dealing the biggest blow since World War Two to the project of forging greater unity in the continent.

As the grim reality sank in that a major member had voted to part ways with the 28-nation bloc in Thursday’s referendum, some political analysts went so far as to suggest that the “dream of a European super-state is over” .

Results from the referendum defied bookmakers’ odds to show a 52-48 per cent victory for the campaign to leave the bloc Britain joined more than 40 years ago.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls summed up the sense of doom and gloom that started sweeping across the continent since early morning: “It’s an explosive shock. At stake is the break-up pure and simple of the union. Now is the time to invent another Europe.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who invited the French and Italian leaders to Berlin to discuss future steps, called it a watershed for European unification.

In the United Kingdom itself, an emotional David Cameron, who led the “Remain” campaign to defeat and lost the gamble he took when he promised the referendum in 2013, said he would leave office by October.

“The British people have made the very clear decision to take a different spath and as such I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction,” the British prime minister said in a televised address outside his residence.

“I do not think it would be right for me to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination,” he added, choking back tears before walking back through 10 Downing Street’s black door with his arm around his wife Samantha.

Commentators came up with bleak assessments, even suggesting that the 300-year-old United Kingdom could now break apart.

The leader of Scotland — where nearly two-thirds of voters wanted to stay in the EU — said a new referendum on independence from the rest of Britain was “highly likely”.

Global financial markets plunged as the results started trickling in. Stocks saw more than $2 trillion wiped off their value. Big banks took a battering, with Lloyds, Barclays and RBS falling as much as 30 per cent.

The pound fell as much as 10 per cent against the dollar to touch levels last seen in 1985, on fears the decision could hit investment in the world’s fifth largest economy, threaten London’s role as a global financial capital and usher in months of political uncertainty. The euro slid three per cent.

THE ROAD AHEAD: According to financial experts, quitting the world’s biggest trading bloc could cost Britain access to the trade barrier-free single market and means it must seek new trade accords with countries around the world. A poll of economists predicted Britain was likelier than not to fall into recession within a year.

The EU, which rose out of the ashes of two world wars and fascist and communist totalitarianism to unite a continent of prosperous democracies, faces economic and political damage without Britain as it has the EU’s biggest financial centre, a UN Security Council veto, a powerful army and nuclear weapons.

The result emboldened eurosceptics in other member states, with French National Front leader Marine Le Pen and Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders urging their countries also hold referendums. Le Pen changed her Twitter profile picture to a Union Jack and declared “Victory for freedom!”

The vote will trigger at least two years of divorce proceedings with the EU, the first exit by any member state. Prime Minister Cameron, in office since 2010, said it would be up to his successor to formally start the exit process.

His Conservative Party rival Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who became the most recognisable face of the Leave camp, is now widely tipped to seek his job.

“We can find our voice in the world again, a voice that is commensurate with the fifth biggest economy on Earth,” he told reporters at Leave campaign headquarters.

Lawmakers from the opposition Labour Party also launched a no-confidence motion to topple their leader, leftist Jeremy Corbyn, accused by opponents in the party of campaigning tepidly for its Remain stance.

“INDEPENDENCE DAY”: There was euphoria among Britain’s eurosceptic forces, claiming a victory over the political establishment, big business and foreign leaders including US President Barack Obama who had urged Britain to stay in.

“Let June 23 go down in our history as our independence day,” said Nigel Farage, leader of the eurosceptic UK Independence Party, describing the EU as “doomed” and “dying”.

The shock hits a European bloc already reeling from a euro zone debt crisis, unprecedented mass migration and confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. Support for anti-immigrant and anti-EU parties has surged across the continent.

Left in uncertainty is the relationship Britain can negotiate with the EU. The bloc’s officials have said UK-based banks and financial firms could lose automatic access to sell services in Europe.

Tricky questions also face the millions of British expatriates who live freely elsewhere in the bloc as well as millions of EU citizens who live and work in Britain.

Britain has always been ambivalent about its relations with the rest of post-war Europe. A firm supporter of free trade, tearing down internal economic barriers and expanding the EU to take in ex-communist eastern states, it opted out of joining the euro single currency and the Schengen border-free zone.

Cameron’s ruling Conservatives in particular have harboured a vocal anti-EU wing for generations, and it was partly to silence such figures that he called the referendum.

The 11th hour decision of Boris Johnson – Cameron’s schoolmate from the same elite Eton private boarding school - to come down on the side of Leave gave the exit campaign a credible voice.

World leaders including Obama, Germany’s Merkel, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Nato and Commonwealth governments had all urged a Remain vote, saying Britain would be more influential in the EU.

The four-month campaign was among the most divisive ever waged in Britain, with accusations of lying and scare-mongering on both sides and rows over immigration which critics said at times unleashed overt racism.

At the darkest hour, a pro-EU member of parliament was stabbed and shot to death in the street last week. The suspect later told a court his name was “Death to traitors, freedom for Britain”.

DEEP SPLIT: The campaign revealed deep splits in British society, with the pro-Brexit side drawing support from voters who felt left behind by globalisation and blamed EU immigration for low wages. Older voters backed Brexit; the young mainly wanted to stay in. London and Scotland supported the EU, but swathes of England that have not shared in the capital’s prosperity voted to leave.

Support for Remain among Scots prompted Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to declare it “democratically unacceptable” for Scotland to be dragged out of the EU, two years after voting to stay part of the United Kingdom. “I think an independence referendum is now highly likely,” she said.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2016