Rowling on the Brexit Vote: I Wish Magic Was Real

As the UK voted to leave to European Union yesterday, and the markets crashed, the PM resigned, and uncertainty reigned, Rowling wished her world was real.

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And in the end, once again,Rowling banked on the British people to see things her way–and they didn’t.

This is not the first time it has happened this year. Rowling, for instance, was banking on Sunday Trading Laws, in which basic capitalism is still banned on Sunday except for the hours between 10am-6pm, to be struck down last March, especially once it was announced that her final Harry Potter book was coming out worldwide at 12midnight on a Sunday morning. No dice. England is the only country where 12midnight Potter parties will have to play weird game sin order to distribute books to fans at the same time everyone else does.

Now the country has disappointed her once again, as England and Wales voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU last night, so much so that Scotland and Northern Ireland’s votes to stay were not enough. Rowling was devastated.

Now, not only has the pound crashed to levels against the dollar not seen since the early 80s, the Prime Minister has resigned, paving the way for national joke Boris Johnson (the UK’s version of Trump) to become PM.

More importantly, Scotland is talking once again about voting to leave the UK, only a year after it narrowly voted to stay. Rowling was a large proponent of the Stay campaign. One has the idea she might change her mind now.

So has Northern Ireland, for that matter, suggesting that not only will this vote upset the apple cart for the European Union but might be the final death blow to those countries which make up the last of what was once the British Empire that reached from sea to shining sea.

With the vote 48 to 52 to leave, those in the remain campaign are enraged, suggesting that there will be quite a level of unrest for the next few months.

Part of Rowling’s reaction is the terror from the creative community that the EU and the UK, both have which have provided massive funding to the arts, will no longer do so. The British and the BBC, for instance have been considered sources of entertainment above and beyond others, and Rowling’s choice to open Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London’s West End was partly predicated on that. With a huge recession now underway–the Pound has stabilized, but a literally half of what it was before–and a probable brain drain of artists out of the UK and to the EU, it’s no wonder Rowling is in mourning this day, and wishes for Diagon Alley to be a real place where she can drown her sorrows in butterbeer.