The aftershocks of history,

Wondrous sunshine greeted many Britons Friday morning when they woke up to learn they had just voted to leave the European Union. Was this a sign perhaps that the stars won’t actually fall from the sky, as had been gloomily predicted if the United Kingdom turned its back on Europe in its once-in-a-generation referendum?

Well, no, don’t believe it. The stars are already beginning to fall and the skies above Britain are darkening.

For no discernible benefit, this was a seismic moment in Britain’s history that has plunged the country into political crisis. It virtually ensures an economic meltdown and threatens the survival of not only the European Union, but the United Kingdom itself.

And the stunning is that the damage was self-inflicted. To his shame, Prime Minister David Cameron didn’t need to call for this referendum at all. He did so simply to quell the murmurings of a Conservative backbench revolt.

It was the grubbiness of partisan politics that triumphed, in a vote that may change the U.K. forever.

Here are five historic aftershocks from Thursday’s dramatic vote. Acollapse of U.K.’s political order The vote was a staggering rebuke to all corners of established British authority.

By a narrow margin, Britons rejected the recommendation of twothirds of the British Parliament and the majority of big business and economic experts. It is likely that former London mayor Boris Johnson — derided as a “court jester” by former prime minister John Major — will succeed David Cameron. One of his first challenges will be the threat of a second Scottish independence referendum, now “highly likely” after the U.K. vote. Alooming economic meltdown There were efforts on Friday by the governor of the Bank of England, Canadian Mark Carney, to assure the country that everything was under control. But the financial and currency markets thought otherwise. The British pound plummeted. It reached levels not seen since 1985 and even lower than during the 2008 financial collapse. Stock markets in Europe and Asia tumbled sharply. Financial uncertainty will directly affect the pocketbook of average Britons. Watch how Europe will retaliate Britain’s exit from the European Union may affect the EU as much as the U.K. itself. EU officials are expected to be tough with Britain as a signal to other European countries. Europe’s far-right parties were jubilant Friday. They saw Brexit as a victory for their own anti-immigrant policies and threatened their own referendums. In order to quell this “contagion,” as EU officials describe it, they will try to teach Britain a lesson. Inciting a fear of immigrants Polls suggest that the key issue was immigration. Net migration to Britain last year was 330,000 people, more than half from the EU. In spite of studies that indicated that these immigrants contributed more to the economy than they cost, fears that Britain was being “taken over” were easy to stoke. Politicians pushed racist and xenophobic images, and these were reinforced by Britain’s rabidly right-wing tabloid press. Lessons for the world It was telling that young people voted to stay in Europe, while their parents and grandparents rebelled. The campaign became a vote of defiance, a proxy war for other burning 21st-century issues like income inequality and the failure of Europe — infatuated with the ideology of austerity — to deal with it. Affluent London voted to Remain, while most working-class Britons voted to Leave. In the era of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, this pattern has resonance.

So, in the surreal world of Brexit, who else but Donald Trump could embody the absurdity of it all? Trump was in Scotland on Friday to reopen one of his golf courses. He called Brexit “a great thing,” and tweeted: “Just arrived in Scotland. Place is going wild over the vote.” He didn’t seem to know that Scotland voted to remain. Why does that not surprise us?