The Angle

The Angle: Brexit Stage Right Edition

Slate’s daily newsletter on the dawning of a new political era, the British establishment we have to blame, and the blockbuster movie fit for these explosive times.

Goodbye, EU, it’s been real. Above, commuters heading into the City of London cross London Bridge in front of Tower Bridge on Friday.

Daniel Sorabji/AFP/Getty Images

Rebecca Onion had the good sense to take the day off just as the world was falling apart (#rebexit), so I’m here as your sub. Be good, please!

Brexit, a portmanteau you may not have been familiar with as recently as two days ago, is now a reality, one with global and historic significance: The “Leave” side won the United Kingdom’s referendum on whether to secede from the European Union. Soon after the results of the referendum were announced, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he would resign within the next four months. This is the dawning of a new political era, argues Yascha Mounk: “The decision of the British electorate to leave the European Union constitutes the most significant rebellion of the citizens of an affluent liberal democracy against their political system since the end of World War II. It signals the beginning of an era in which we can no longer be assured that the citizens of countries from Sweden to the United States will reliably choose liberal democracy over far-right populism and xenophobia.” It’s a scary prospect, and with the rise of Donald Trump, it’s also not so far off from what’s happening on this side of the Atlantic.

The British establishment has only itself to blame, according to Slate’s Gabriel Roth, who grew up in England: Parliament member Boris Johnson saw the “Leave” campaign as an opportunity to grow his power, and Prime Minister David Cameron gambled with his country’s future: “After years of austerity and stagnation, the governing classes saw anti-elitism and racial resentment as tigers to ride. Surely they were still in control. Why not let the punters have a bit of fun?” It’s all fun and games until someone leaves the EU.

You can read much, much more on the Brexit here, today and in the coming days, but in case you want to read about something a little lighter, luckily Dana Stevens wrote like the wind to bring you a review of Independence Day: Resurgence. (The movie, annoyingly, was not screened early for critics.) The sequel to the 1996 smash hit is the perfect disaster movie for our stupid times, Stevens writes: As in the world of the film, “[t]he Earth’s molten core—our gravitational center, our essence, the unseen point that holds us together—really is under siege.” Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, and more of the gang are back, as are myriad disaster sequences, which Stevens compares to “operatic arias”: They “have a dreamlike and weirdly exhilarating quality that’s quite different from the plodding wham-bam destruction of the average action blockbuster.”

Also in theaters this weekend: Swiss Army Man, the farting corpse movie that transcends that ignoble designation with beauty and hilarity, writes Jeffrey Bloomer.

For additional fun: Game of Thrones cocktails to sip during Sunday’s finale.

Totally seeing parallels between the Brexit and Westerosi politics,

Heather