UK. Voting is open in today’s historic referendum on whether the UK should remain a member of the European Union or leave (‘Brexit’).
Some 46.5 million people are eligible to vote – only the third nationwide referendum in UK history.
While the remain camp had been widely touted to win for much of the fourth-month campaign, a late surge by their opponents has the country on a knife-edge. That’s reflected in the widely contrasting positions – and front page headlines today – adopted by the UK’s leading newspapers (see below).
The UK and European travel retail sector has a very partisan interest in the outcome. A Brexit vote would usher in the spectre of intra-EU duty free being able to restart in the now non-EU UK (duty free between intra-EU countries was abolished in 1999). In such a scenario EU travel retailers could also sell duty free to UK-bound travellers. Click here to read a special article by industry consultant and former travel retailer Ivo Favotto on the industry implications of Brexit.
[Above and below] Contrasting headlines across Britain’s daily newspapers underline the way the country has been split down the middle on the Brexit debate
Comment: In front of me as I write is my Official Poll Card for today’s historic vote, writes Martin Moodie. I am, of course, an immigrant to the UK (I now carry dual New Zealand and British passports) and it is immigration – along with the implications for the UK economy – that has stood out as a key driver of today’s decision by the British people.
It is a critical moment in British history and the repercussions for our sector a mere sideshow to the much wider ramifications of Brexit. This time tomorrow the UK will be reaffirmed as avowedly European or waking up to a defiantly re-established independence. The implications could hardly be more profound.
