Brexit: Results confirm UK votes to leave EU, pound at 30-year low

Britain has voted to leave the European Union, results confirmed on Friday morning, sending sterling crashing and leading economists to slash their growth forecasts for the economy.

Not long after 0600 BST on Friday, the Leave campaign had amassed 16.835m votes, around 52% of the total and officially enough to confirm the country's choice for Brexit, compared to 15.692m for Remain, or 48%.

Over the course of the night, the pound was sent crashing and was down 10.1% to 1.3371 versus the dollar, a 30-year low. The FTSE is set to suffer substantial losses when trading begins at 0800 BST, with IG's pre-market trading indicating a massive 560-point decline to below 5,800.

Morgan Stanley predicted the pound was heading to 1.25/1.30 against the dollar as a Leave vote looked likely, while others feared worse.

Economist Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight said as he believed the vote to leave the EU "is bad news for the UK economy" in the near- and medium-term he was cutting his forecasts for GDP growth.

"Even supporters of the Leave campaign have acknowledged that there will be a near-term hit to the economy from heightened uncertainty affecting business and consumer activity, as well as from financial market turmoil," he wrote, early on Friday morning.

He added: "Following the UK’s decision to leave the EU, IHS is substantially cutting its GDP growth forecasts to 1.5% (from 2.0%) for 2016, 0.2% (from 2.4%) for 2017 and 1.3% (from 2.3%) for 2018."