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脱欧公投搅动英国政治

2016-06-25来源:CRI

The voter's decision to withdraw from the European Union has set off a series of major political moves.

The drama began early with the announcement by Prime Minister David Cameron that he's going to step down.

"I will do everything I can as Prime Minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months, but I do not think it will right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination."

脱欧公投搅动英国政治

Shortly after Cameron's announcement, two Labor MPs submitted a motion of no confidence in their leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Former Labor cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw says Corbyn needs to clear the way for new opposition leadership.

"Jeremy is a nice and decent man and his leadership, or rather lack of it, during this referendum campaign, has been absolutely abysmal. And I think that like the Prime Minister he shoulder his share of the responsibility, do the honorable thing for the sake of the country and the Labor Party and step down."

At the same time in Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is describing the result of leaving the European Union as "unacceptable" for Scotland.

As such, she says second independence referendum should be on the table.

"If parliament judges a second referendum is the best, or only way to protect our place in Europe, it must have the option to hold one. That means we must act now to protect that position. I can therefore confirm today that in order to protect that position, we will begin to prepare the legislation that would be required to enable a new independent referendum to take place if and when parliament so decides. "

Scotland voted by 62% to remain in the EU, followed by London, where around 60-percent voted 'Remain.'

Meanwhile, there's already been an online petition calling for the City of London to leave the rest of the UK and stay inside the European Union.

The petition received over 50-thousand supporters within hours of being put online.

While that petition is unlikely to go anywhere, Professor Tony Travers at the London School of Economics and Political Science says the EU Referendum is certainly going to reshape UK politics for years to come.

"This has been an extremely hard fought referendum campaign, which has left some people from all parties staying on one side to stay and others on the other side to leave. So it split political parties. For the Conservative Party, it has led to a sort of 'civil war' really with David Cameron on one side and leading Conservative Party members including Boris Johnson, former Mayor of London on the other; for the Labour Party, more of them were in favor of staying but they have their own problems, with their leadership not particularly popular with many of their own MPs. So both these parties have found it really challenging."

For CRI, I'm Duan Xuelian in London