What are these petitioners thinking? You cannot retroactively change the rules and repeat the voting until you get the desired result. And they probably don’t want that a future referendum to get back into the EU would require at least 60% based on a turnout of not less than 75%. I hope the whole parliament votes NO.

I was very much for Britain remaining in the EU, but now I’m for respecting the democratic decision. All over Europe, populist parties (including the German AFD) pretend that everything would be better if their country left the EU, but there is no empiric data to prove them right or wrong. So like it or not, you are our lab rats now, and we will carefully watch what happens. I am sorry for you, but I hope a lot of bad things happen. If everycountry leaves the EU, Germany is left to dominate Europe by economic power and population, and I certainly don’t want that.

(I never thought much about it, but there may actually be a reason why the Pottermore Sorting Hat put me into Slytherin.)

HG

I live in a town full of them. I am in no way surprised that my future was torpedoed out of spite by a bunch of reactionary old codgers in seaside towns whose primary occupation consists of waiting to die.

I can't help but shake the feeling there's going to be some kind of fallout over this that nobody predicted or anticipated while discussing possible consequences of leaving. Just... this nasty gut feeling that I really hope is just me being paranoid.

I might have rather selfish reasons for being unhappy about this decision, too: how much are they going to tighten their immigration laws, now? :(

I hope Cameron is happy with his last term, because his country will pay quite the cost for it. Now that independance means staying in the EU, Scotland will leave as fast as possible, and northern Irish also began talking about this.

And I'm not even talking about the students (an article from le Monde talks about an English student who could finish her studies only thanks to Erasmus), or what will happen in Europa, where all the right-wing... politicians are talking about their own referendums.

Like I said, I hope it was worth it, Cameron. You gutted your country and Europa for this.

I kept the faith, and I kept voting
Not for the iron fist, but for the helping hand
'Cause theirs is a land with a wall around it
And mine is a faith in my fellow man.
Theirs is a land of hope and glory,
Mine is the green fields and the factory floors.
Theirs are the skies all dark with bombers,
And mine is the peace we knew,
Between the wars.
-- Billy Bragg, Between The Wars (1985)

We've been swinging our trouser-mounted black puddings around on the world stage for a while now, because certain politicians (Farage, Gove, similarly wasted pregnancies) seem to still believe we're a superpower. We're not. We gave it all back, because power is not the end goal. It now seems that the lessons of history have been categorically forgotten, because we are going to shrink and turn inward, and to quote one of Terry Pratchett's short stories on the matter, "that's not what being human means. You've got to reach out."

That's taken from a story about virtual reality, in which everything grinds to a halt while people live in a fantasy world of their own creation.

The irony is not lost on me.