UK referendum: who can keep the post-Brexit landscape from falling apart?

The Leave vote throws into doubt the future of the United Kingdom, the EU, Nato – and stewardship of the UK itself. Can anyone capably step into the void left by David Cameron’s resignation?

With its usual talent for misplaced optimism the stock market had decided in the early hours of Friday morning that its complacent bet on a Remain vote was coming good. When the Leave camp’s majority for a British withdrawal from the European Union (EU) later became unmistakable London markets fell by £200bn and sterling suffered its worst drop for 30 years.

It may all calm down as level-headed self-interest reasserts itself over impassioned hearts. But many forces, most of them beyond British voters’ parochial concerns or politicians’ control, are at now work. In Berlin and Brussels, Paris and far beyond, not all are benign.

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