The UK votes for Brexit: The Twitter fallout

Alright, bear with me: its been a long night. I only stopped watching the EU referendum results come in when my laptop battery staged a referendum of its own, and decided it was time for me to leave the horror unfolding before my eyes around 2:30am.

By the time I woke up three hours later, what looked likely has was confirmed. Britain has voted to leave the European Union, and David Cameron has just resigned.

In the meantime, here’s how Twitter reacted as the night unfolded.

The night started with the polls closing at 10pm, after which markets were buoyant, and Nigel Farage – leader of the UK Independence Party – pretty much conceded. Then he conceded. Then he conceded again.

The first ward to declare was Gibraltar, and provided a landslide win for Remain that even the world’s most experienced dictators would be proud of, delivering a whopping 96% majority for Remain.

That, given the majority of the territory’s population has to commute to the EU every day, isn’t the most surprising result. The first sign things were up came when Newcastle declared around midnight, and the first sign that things were awry:

Though there were some moments of mirth:

Things got worse in Sunderland shortly afterwards:

Shetland and Orkney voted to stay, but they were swimming against the national tide:

At this point, experts were still calling it too close to call, but the betting markets had Leave rapidly on the rise:

…and the markets were getting nervy:

As was the Labour party:

But there were still some pretty funny tweets despite the sombre atmosphere:

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But make no mistake. People were angry that predictions of chaos were coming true:

Brief hope was provided by the eight million people who live in London, who overwhelmingly backed remain:

But it was nowhere near enough and around 4.30am, the BBC and ITV were calling the result for Leave:

And it was official by 6am:

It became clear that the result was overwhelmingly because of older generations.

Presented without comment:

Vote Leave was already going back on some of its more ambitious pledges:

🙁

Around 8am, Prime Minister David Cameron exited Downing Street to talk to the press. Rumours began swirling that he was resigning:

But someone else emerged first:

Eventually the Prime Minister emerged though and sure enough, there he goes.

Some people could not resist retweeting this classic from Cameron just months earlier:

And now Cameron is gone, at least some people can see the gallows humour in things:

I got this one well and truly wrong, but somewhere in my alternate reality there was no EU referendum, because last year the UK elected Ed Miliband Prime Minister under the Alternative Vote.

As the morning progressed, the fallout of the results continued. Some couldn’t quite believe what they’d done:

And things turned ugly for prominent Leave campaigner Boris Johnson, given he pretty brazenly backed Leave for his career:

And then Nicola Sturgeon demanded that Scotland have the right to vote on independence again, having voted overwhelmingly to remain:

Oh, and Northern Ireland might go the same way:

London also overwhelmingly voted Remain, so maybe sign the petition for the capital to seceed the United Kingdom?

And now Donald Trump is here, saying how delighted he is that Scotland voted to leave (it didn’t):

In conclusion:

This is all a horrible mess and I’m sleepy. Can I go back to bed now, please?

Image: Descrier used under Creative Commons