The financial services industry is of central importance to the UK economy. It represents some 7% of GDP. It also generates major exports for the UK - in the region of one-third of UK financial services are exported to the EU. News reports in the immediate aftermath of the referendum result included the sharp drop in banking stocks; the overtures being made to attract UK financial business away from the City to other EU centres; and plans by leading financial institutions to move some operations away from the City. Vivid illustrations all of the importance of the Brexit vote for the City and the UK financial services industry.

According the Office for National Statistics' 2014 estimate, 300,000 UK residents were born in Germany and 131,000 are German nationals. This makes them the fifth biggest group of immigrants in the UK by country of birth—preceded only by people born in India, Poland, Pakistan and the Republic of Ireland— and the twelfth largest group of immigrants in terms of nationality. Thus, although Brexit's rhetoric against immigration has not directly targeted Germans, a large number will be affected by the UK's changing relationship with the EU. Just as for other EU citizens, their future status in the UK is all but certain.

Some events seem to be outside the scope of political imagination, even if they are not improbable. That the United Kingdom, one of the European Union's (EU) largest and politically most influential Member States, might leave the EU, is one of these events. The outcome of the referendum of June 23, 2016 has evoked surprise and notions of doom. “Catastrophe”, “explosion of a bomb”, “drama,” are only some of the terms used by politicians and media observers to express their surprise and to signal that they are overwhelmed by the outcome. Reactions in the immediate aftermath of the referendum were uncoordinated, conflicting, and did not show a strong spirit of European integration. For example, it is not self-evident why the foreign ministers of the six founding Member States should gather to strategize over the response to the referendum, thus effectively excluding the 21 other Member States.

It is common to describe the European Union as “new,” “unique,” “sui generis,” and hard to fit into existing categories of institutional arrangements, national or international. Indeed, debates on how to describe the EU are often lively and sometimes illuminating. In concrete terms, however, one of the best ways to understand the EU's distinction from other forms of treaty-based trade and integration regimes is the EU's distinctive lack of unilateral safeguard and escape valve mechanisms available to policy-makers in the various Member States.

The European Union stands for the successful public ordering of “Europe.” Its goal is to shape and organize this political and economic area through law, a project involving societies of different mentalities, western democracies, old and young countries in transition, and former Great Powers. That might be ambitious enough, but pressure from outside the Union is also increasing. Alternative concepts campaign strongly to win supporters. The Union's integration agenda is plagued by obvious economic, financial, and social problems. A dissenting spirit has emerged around strongly held convictions concerning what has caused the problems and who should be held responsible. It is a dissenting spirit that, following the Brexit-referendum 23 June 2016, will have significant consequences. Now we have the first withdrawal of a Member State from the European Union.

Regardless of what happens in the next few months and years in the post-referendum UK, much of the harm has been done. The uncertainty, in particular, is killing. It will have a significant impact on many of the UK's most productive economic sectors including universities and financial services. It will cast a shadow over inward investment and over the willingness to take risks of those responsible, for example, for building new infrastructure. There will be a brain drain. Already in some respects the EU is acting as if the UK were no longer a Member State. It has no Commissioner since Jonathan Hill's resignation. After the EUCO summit on 29 June which took pace without the UK's presence, EU27 conclusions were issued.

The Brexit referendum confronted us with a “return of the repressed.” It represents a momentous eruption of popular sovereignty. The people have spoken. Liberals cringe: “Ugh, this is the voice of unreason.”

The British vote on 23rd June, opting by a rather slim majority to leave the European Union, has sent waves of uncertainty rippling through the island and the continent, as well as through some milestones of European integration. One of these is European citizenship. Paradoxically, it receives a hard shake at the hand of national citizenships, exercised through a referendum.

There is a certain degree of irony in writing about Brexit for a law journal- a read put together, hosted and read mostly, if not exclusively, by ‘experts’. The irony lies in the fact that the outcome of the UK referendum on the EU was, amongst other things, a rejection of experts; or rather, of current mobilizations of expertize and the political allegiances of a large number of experts. Despite this irony, or precisely because of it, I will reflect on three interrelated questions that, in my mind, determined the content and outcome of this historic referendum. First, I will discuss the discourse of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘control’ at the centre of the Leave campaign. Secondly, I will focus on the role of expertize and (technocratic) knowledge both in the construction of the European project and in the revolt against it. Finally, I will argue that given neoliberal hegemony and its heavily unequal distributive outcomes, revolts against contemporary structures of power, both national and inter/supranational are to be expected. Therefore, the question for progressive lawyers is how to mobilize our expertise so that these revolts do not become the exclusive playing terrain of the extreme right with unforeseen consequences.

I can hardly begin to express what Brexit means for Britain and Scotland. Like many, I am shocked. I am shocked in part by the result itself, and in part by the very fact that I am shocked by the result, despite all the warning signs. Denial and wishful thinking affect us all, so before Remainers place too much blame on complacent, arrogant, elitist politicians, we should look to ourselves. They are but our mirror.

The result of the Brexit referendum sends shockwaves through the political fabric of the UK, Europe and beyond. It is the latest instance in a series of anti-systemic shocks to hit the EU, but will almost certainly not be the last, as discontent with the status quo and a disconnected elite continues unabated across the Continent (and is replicated across the Atlantic), and the European Union provides a convenient target for voters to express their anger and resentment.