UK Brexit, questions from an American

[Ben Davis]

What's the upshot to leaving.  What will change for the UK?

As a Brit, I think I'll chime in here. In brief, we'll be significantly worse off in political, financial and social terms:

Political: The EU is a powerful combination of states, capable of negotiating reasonable/favourable terms on almost every matter of international politics since its birth. That power would be lost and almost impossible to replace. International credibility would also be shot to pieces and UN prestige reduced to that of one of the independent or fringe nations. Brexiters need to understand that the UK alone doesn't have much international kudos at the moment. Regarding the obvious 'deficiencies of EU bureaucracy' (read 'corruption'), it's impossible to fix them from the outside.

Financial: EU political and economic frameworks mean that we have favourable control over revenues generated from imports/exports. That control would be lost and is the major worry for economists, banking institutions & investors as it would mean renegotiating trade deals with every European nation, from scratch. We'd gain a modicum of increased control over taxation, in theory being able to reduce rates however the damage caused to the tax coffers by the likely poorer trade deals would mean increases in tax rates. In fact, the Brexit campaign has already cost the country more in the past 5 days, over £100 billion wiped off share values due to the risk of Brexit, than it cost us in EU membership (£194 million). We're already financially worse off, just from the idea of Brexit.

Social: Immigration benefits the UK vastly more than than it costs us, both financially and socially. Human & civil rights are afforded greater importance than the Brexiters would place on them.