Source: BBC

The UK has voted to leave the EU – a process that has come to be known as Brexit. Here is what is likely to happen next.

Dawn breaks

At exactly 06:00 BST it was confirmed that the UK had voted to leave the European Union. The first thing to stress is that the UK will not leave immediately. The UK will still be a member of the European Union at this stage. The process of leaving will begin, however.

David Cameron’s statement

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David Cameron will almost certainly make a statement – more likely than not in Downing Street.

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This will be followed by a statement to Parliament on Monday or earlier if MPs demand a special sitting on Friday or Saturday.

During the campaign, Mr Cameron insisted that he would not quit as prime minister in the event of a leave vote. However, it remains widely expected that as the British people have rejected his advice to stay in the EU, this would be the time to announce his departure.

The markets react

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All eyes will be on the City of London when trading starts at 08:00 BST.

The value of the pound tumbled after the announcement of the first results in the referendum – falling to its lowest levels against the dollar since 1985.

Some in the Leave camp acknowledged there would be a short-term “blip” in the markets but insist things will quickly return to normal.

Bank governor Mark Carney is likely to emerge as a key figure in the following hours and days and the European Central Bank is also likely to react swiftly given the scale of the changes to the EU that will follow a UK vote to leave.

European leaders respond

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All EU leaders want the UK to stay in the bloc and a Leave vote will be met with dismay and anger across the Channel. EU leaders will probably convene an emergency summit, probably as early as the weekend.

What will happen is difficult to predict. There has already been talk of other EU leaders offering fresh concessions in an attempt to keep the UK on board although both Leave and Remain campaigners have dismissed this, saying the will of the British people must be respected.

And given Mr Juncker – the president of the European Commission – has suggested that “splitters will not be welcomed back with open arms”, the atmosphere could become quite toxic quite quickly.

Europe’s leaders, concerned about the rise of populist anti-EU parties in their own countries, will want a joint declaration of a determination to continue – and there will be demands for the UK to set out where it stands on key issues such as free movement, to reassure the 2.9 million EU citizens living in the UK that they will not be deported.

David Cameron’s future

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The prime minister has insisted he will carry on whatever the result, and on Thursday night 84 Conservative MPs who campaigned for Brexit urged him to remain as prime minister, but there are plenty of commentators and some Tory MPs who believe a Leave vote will put him in an untenable position.

Mr Cameron has already said that he will stand down before the next election due in 2020. If he decided to stay on it would take 50 MPs to write to the party’s 1922 committee to trigger a vote of confidence in his leadership. Iain Duncan Smith, one of Mr Cameron’s predecessors, was brought down in this way.

Only a small handful of MPs have so far said they are prepared to do this but given the wounds that the campaign has opened up, this cannot be ruled out. This, as with Mr Cameron deciding to resign, raises the prospect of a Conservative leadership contest, which would take several months and could add a further layer of uncertainty to the EU exit negotiations.

Pushing the exit button

Mr Cameron said in the event of a leave vote, he would activate Article 50 of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty without undue delay – setting in motion the process of withdrawing from the European Union. George Osborne has suggested this could happen within two weeks of a leave vote.

Once Article 50 is triggered, there is no way back into the EU unless by unanimous consent from all other member states.

But quitting the EU is not an automatic process – it has to be negotiated with the remaining members. These negotiations are meant to be completed within two years but the European Parliament has a veto over any new agreement formalising the relationship between the UK and the EU.

Leave campaigners Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have said there is no need to trigger Article 50 immediately. Only after extensive informal talks with other EU members and the European Commission will it become clear whether and how to trigger Article 50, Vote Leave has said.

The idea would be to allow other EU leaders the time to realise they need a “friendly” trade deal with the UK to continue exporting their consumer goods into the British market without tariffs.

Also Britain could, technically, ignore all of this, the Vote Leave campaign says, and simply write the EU out of its laws, although that wouldn’t make future negotiations any easier.

As only one part of one country has ever left the European Community – Greenland more than 30 years ago (read Carolyn Quinn’s feature on how they left) – we will be in uncharted territory here.

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