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Britain looks for way forward amid political muddle over Brexit

 
Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is seated during the International Monetary and Financial Committee conference in April at the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, held at IMF headquarters in Washington. Treasury chief Osborne sought to calm nerves in the markets Monday as investors worried about the consequences of Britain leaving the European Union. [Associated Press]
Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is seated during the International Monetary and Financial Committee conference in April at the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, held at IMF headquarters in Washington. Treasury chief Osborne sought to calm nerves in the markets Monday as investors worried about the consequences of Britain leaving the European Union. [Associated Press]
Published June 28, 2016

LONDON — Four days after a decisive vote to leave the European Union, Britain was consumed on Monday with questions of when and how the country's departure from the bloc will happen — and increasingly, of whether it will happen at all.

The immediate outcome of Thursday's referendum was not the promised clarity but an epic political muddle and a policy vacuum that invited more confusion and turmoil throughout the day in Britain, on the continent and in the financial markets.

The latest: Britain's historic vote to leave the European Union

Leaders on both sides of the English Channel said there was no viable option but to move gradually toward the withdrawal process. Yet the day's developments did little to dispel the possibility that the crisis could drag on, possibly generating enough economic and political damage to encourage negotiation of a new arrangement between Europe and Britain that would sidestep the need for a formal withdrawal or at least minimize its effects.

Prime Minister David Cameron and leaders of the campaign to leave the bloc stuck to their positions that they would not move quickly to trigger formal talks on withdrawal, even as European leaders turned up the pressure on Britain to get on with it.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany met in Berlin late Monday with her French and Italian counterparts. She signaled that any decision on how to negotiate a withdrawal would have to await a meeting of all 28 EU countries today and Wednesday in Brussels.

Cameron has announced that he will step down, and both his governing Conservative Party and the opposition Labour Party were consumed by internal warfare on Monday, leaving the country lacking strong leadership as it confronted new demands for a referendum on independence for Scotland.

Leaders of the "leave" campaign, including Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who is now a leading candidate to succeed Cameron, notably modulated their tone and some of their positions on Europe, leaving unclear exactly what issues they want to address through a withdrawal.

In the first meeting of Parliament since the referendum, Cameron said he considered the vote binding, though he reiterated that he would leave to his successor the decision to trigger the formal withdrawal process.

About three-quarters of lawmakers had supported remaining in the EU. A senior Conservative lawmaker, Kenneth Clarke, suggested that Parliament could override the referendum — which is not legally binding — while a Labour legislator, David Lammy, called for a second referendum.

Cameron brushed such ideas aside, but he also made it clear that he would not be the one in charge of Britain's messy divorce from Europe.

The man who might be, Johnson, sought to calm nerves and markets with his first extensive remarks on the way forward, setting out a position that seemed to de-emphasize elements of what the exit campaign had promised.

He suggested that Britain should take its time before entering separation proceedings with Brussels, and he gave no details about when he would want to start the process. And the vision he sketched out — of a Britain that is still in a trading bloc with Europe — seemed at best difficult to achieve, since the price of membership in the single market has always been the two things the leave movement explicitly campaigned against: free movement of European citizens across borders and contributions to the bloc's operating budget.

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But there were no signs that European leaders would let Britain off the hook so easily.