Dubai: A hallmark decision cast on Thursday by UK voters to end the 43-year membership in the European Union caught British expatriates living in the UAE off guard.

Expats who spoke to Gulf News questioned the future of their home country following news that the ‘Leave’ side garnered 1.2 million more votes than the ‘Remain’ camp, following a highly divisive campaign, to clinch 52 per cent of the vote.

The shock of the UK’s departure within the next two years deepened on Friday when Prime Minister David Cameron announced he will resign by October to allow 150,000 Tory party members to appoint a new prime minister to negotiate the country’s exit.

It will be up to a new prime minister to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty which sets forth a two-year timetable to ‘Leave’ the EU, reducing country membership to 27.

Jonathan Howell-Jones, a UK expat living in Dubai, said he was disheartened by the referendum outcome and wondered what the future holds for Great Britain if a member of the union such as Scotland could hold their own referendum to ‘Leave’ the UK.

“I am gutted,” said Howell-Jones, adding Great Britain could soon be “Little England” if the Kingdom were to be broken up by further referenda. “The biggest concern I have is that the heart was clearly over the head. I think this is a black day in our history.”

Howell-Jones said the vote in favour of ‘Leave’ may not bode well for UK expats living abroad and in the UAE given that the UK may now be viewed as isolationist.

“I don’t think it will reflect well on the British community here in the UAE,” he said.

Holly Stringer, a UK expat living in the UAE, said she was feeling mixed emotions for the UK of tomorrow.

“I am happy and scared at the same time,” Stringer told Gulf News.

Expat Jon Clarke, a resident of Dubai, said Friday was a good day for the UK and restores sovereignty to the country.

“I’m surprised. I didn’t think we would do it. I thought we would bottle it and not ‘Leave’,” Clarke told Gulf News on Friday. “This is a very good thing and will get rid of the EU bureaucrats meddling in the UK’s affairs.”

Clarke, 46, said those who voted to ‘Leave’ did not believe appointed EU officials should hold so much sway over the internal running of the country.

“To keep UK in the EU financial stream was okay at one point but to interfere in our country’s political decisions was just wrong,” he said. “It’s a good day for England.”

The reaction on social media was mixed with some lamenting that the decision to ‘Leave’ was an embarassing moment both personally and internationally.

Orlando Crowcroft, a former UK expat living in Dubai, voiced his displeasure at the vote on his Facebook account.

“Shocked, really, ashamed, worried – but embarassed mostly,” he said.

The UK Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Philip Parham said in a statement to Gulf News on Friday: “The UK remains the fifth largest economy in the world, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a member of the G7, G20 and NATO [and will ] continue to be the only member of those groups which spends both 2% of GDP on defence and 0.7 per cent on development assistance. As the Prime Minister has emphasised, Britain’s economy is fundamentally strong.”

Meanwhile, the numbers of UK expats who voted in the referendum from the UAE have not been released.

In order to cast their ballots from UAE, UK expatriates living in the UAE were advised to register online by May 16 of this year, seven days before the June 23 referendum vote.

Of 5.5 million UK expats living abroad, there were 106,000 overseas electors on the commission’s register.

There are an estimated 120,000 British nationals living in the UAE.