Brexit: Now What?

Plenty of Thoroughbred business professionals both inside and outside of Britain and Europe are trying to figure out what the U.K.'s 52%-48% vote Thursday to leave the European Union means to the horse business. There's an awful lot about which as yet we have no idea, and a few things we can say.

First, generally it cannot be good for business because it's sure to further complicate things. International protocols to do with disease and movement of horses which are sponsored by the EU are going to have to be amended, renewed, something: there's a suspicion that, in the efforts to reduce bureaucracy, it will just take more bureaucracy to disengage and then re-engage things.

Second, specifically it's going to complicate further the already difficult issue of recruiting stable staff. A big part of the Brexit victory was anti-immigration sentiment; they sold the idea to working-class and middle-class Labour Party voters that foreigners, both from inside and outside the European Union, have been taking British jobs. But stable staff are not jobs the British seem to want, just as Americans aren't looking for jobs mucking stalls. Who's going to do those jobs, in the UK as in America, if you throw everybody out who's not from your tribe?

Third, with sterling trading below $1.40 you can forget about British interests buying much in America this year, though it will really help Americans looking to import from the U.K.; and, fourth, British racing is absolutely dependent on the support of Middle Eastern money. As long as the big players are properly looked after, fine; but if things start to get messy and complicated, there are plenty of other places like France, Australia, and Dubai where owners might have just as good or better chance of having a good experience.

From a broader perspective, it was striking that younger and better-educated voters were pretty strongly for Remain, while the older and less well-educated were the higher the percentage who voted to leave. This tended to invalidate the Leave campaigners' claim that they were doing this for 'the future,' since their children and grandchildren aged 24 and under voted 3-to-1 to Remain.

London voted strongly to remain; Scotland also voted strongly (62-38) to stay in, raising the scepter of a second referendum on Scotland leaving the U.K.–so presumably they wouldn't have to be forced out of Europe.

The only trouble with that is, will there even be a Europe to be a part of? The English vote could be the tip of the iceberg, and could in fact trigger the collapse of the European Union itself; there's plenty of discontent fermenting in other European countries, and the horse business could end up being collateral damage. Finally, the vote is likely to derail the political rise of Newmarket MP Matthew Hancock, who is closely aligned with the Chancellor, George Osborne, one of the big political losers in Thursday's vote, along with PM David Cameron. Hancock was previously a rising star who is strongly backed by the racing community.