Story highlights Fareed Zakaria: We are now watching the emergence of a new political divide

Zakaria: Divide is rooted in central reality of our times -- a world being reshaped by globalization

Fareed Zakaria is host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," which airs Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN.

(CNN) I do not recall a more event-filled 24 hours since the end of the Cold war.

On Friday morning, Britan voted to withdraw from the European Union , a decades-old, deeply intertwined economic and political association. Then, Scotland's first minister proposed another vote to break away from Britain, ending the 300-year union between them. The leaders in Northern Ireland floated a similar idea.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he would resign, and the head of the opposition Labor Party might be forced out as well. Oh, and global markets lost 2 trillion dollars of value in one day.

The economic and political consequences of Brexit will become clearer in the weeks and months ahead. It seems that there is going to be considerable remorse and regret among those who voted for Brexit without really understanding what it meant.

But however that plays out, there is one lesson we can take from the Brexit referendum that applies across the English Channel to other European countries, and across the Atlantic to the United States: We are now watching the emergence of a new political divide that is likely to shape the politics of the Western world for the next fifty years.