German leader Angela Merkel urges caution on ‘Brexit’ talks as uncertainties grow

Reporting from London —  German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday urged her fellow European Union leaders to react cautiously to Britain’s vote to leave the EU, breaking with fellow European ministers who seek a swift and decisive divorce with Britain.

“It should not take ages, but I don’t think there’s any reason to fight now, pushing for a short time period” before talks begin, she told journalists, adding that the vote is “not a reason to be in some way nasty in the negotiations.”

Merkel also underscored that even from outside the EU, “Great Britain will remain a close partner with close economic ties to us.”

Her remarks Saturday suggest that the weekend has brought Britain and Europe no closer to clarity on the implications of Thursday’s British referendum on leaving the European Union.

Political leaders in both places have split on whether the vote, though technically nonbinding on the British Parliament, should lead immediately to negotiations with the 27 other EU member states on a formal divorce.

Merkel’s cautious approach put her at odds with some of her governing coalition partners in Germany.

After meeting with European colleagues Saturday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is not from the same party as the chancellor, appeared to be in favor of hastening Britain’s exit from the EU.

“This process should get underway as soon as possible so that we are not left in limbo, so that we can concentrate on the future of Europe,” he said.

Days after the “Brexit” vote, the political and economic toll for Britain continued to climb. Jonathan Hill, who as the equivalent of the EU’s finance minister was Britain’s highest-ranking diplomat in the union, resigned his Brussels post Saturday, stating, “What’s done cannot be undone.”

Across Britain, there were already signs that the split could be more complicated than many had initially assumed — and there were growing calls for a do-over.

A petition on Parliament’s website calling for a second referendum had gathered more than 1.9 million signatures by late afternoon Saturday, with the numbers rising by almost 100,000 every couple of hours. Parliament considers debating all petitions that garner 100,000 signatures or more.

Brexit campaign leader Nigel Farage, head of the UK Independence Party, was forced to acknowledge that the promise of a 350-million-pound weekly Brexit dividend — money the “Leave” campaign said could be spent on Britain’s National Health Service if it did not have to make contributions to the EU — was a chimera.

No one could guarantee where any such funds would go, he said on a nationwide morning-TV program: “That was one of the mistakes made by the Leave campaign.”

The county of Cornwall at England’s far southwestern tip, where 56.5% of voters cast ballots to leave the EU, said it now fears losing 60 million pounds a year in EU aid as an economically disadvantaged region. “We will be taking urgent steps to ensure that the U.K. government protects Cornwall’s position in any negotiations,” the county council said in demanding that the government make up the loss.

The possible financial effects of the split also were becoming clear.

Moody’s Investor Service, after lowering its outlook on British sovereign debt from “stable” to “negative,” warned that the vote to exit the European Union “will herald a prolonged period of uncertainty for the U.K.”

It also could result in “diminished confidence and lower spending and investment, threatening the U.K.’s growth prospects,” the rating agency warned.

The vote in Britain brought renewed recognition of the country’s deep political and social cleavages, both generational and geographical. About 75% of Britons ages 18 to 24 voted to stay in the EU, while more than 50% of those 65 and older voted to leave. Scotland voted to stay by 62% to 38%, and Northern Ireland by 56% to 44%. London and its immediate suburbs voted about 60% in favor of staying in the EU, but outside London, nearly 60% of voters in England favored leaving.

These figures point to what may be the most important political risk presented by the vote: changes in the structure of Britain, or even its dissolution. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wasted little time after the results were in to announce she would seek “immediate discussions” with the EU to “protect Scotland’s place” in the union.

She also said a second referendum on Scottish independence is now “highly likely.” A 2014 referendum on independence lost 55% to 44%.

Educational achievement correlated closely with the vote, as those with limited education voted to leave, while those with university degrees favored staying. Working-class voters tended to vote to leave, a signal of the widening discontent over globalization that politicians and policymakers throughout the developed world will have to consider. Feelings are strong among less-skilled and educated workers who have been denied the benefits of globalization or the opportunities for retraining in the new economy that have long been promised to them.

European leaders, in urging a speedy processing of the split, were reacting in part to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to resign after the vote, but not necessarily before his Conservative Party conference in October. Since the negotiations would be conducted by Cameron’s successor, his decision potentially extends the uncertainties about the terms and timing of the split for months.

Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, was echoed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, who called Britain’s breakaway “not an amicable divorce” and called for negotiations to begin “immediately.”

Those EU leaders plainly are worried that drawn-out departure negotiations will encourage other countries unhappy with their relationship with the union to plot their own withdrawals. A swift and stringent negotiation, however, would make clear the consequences of leaving.

Meanwhile, some leaders of the Brexit campaign have started to quail at the political and administrative chaos introduced by Thursday’s vote. Boris Johnson, a Tory member of Parliament and former mayor of London who had tied his political fortunes to the Leave campaign, said at a news conference Friday that there was “no need for haste” in following through on the vote.

“Nothing will change in the short term,” said Johnson, who is expected to vie to succeed Cameron as Conservative leader and prime minister.

The actual mechanism of the British-EU divorce is nebulous. It’s based on Article 50 of the EU’s 2007 Lisbon Treaty, which recognizes the right of member nations to withdraw, but gives only vague guidelines for the process — possibly because the EU was in such an expansionist mind-set at the time that the possibility of a withdrawal was not taken seriously.

Article 50 calls for a two-year negotiation period over terms of the split after it’s invoked but doesn’t regulate when the invocation must take place. In Britain, despite the referendum, that decision is up to the government.

But political observers in Britain and Brussels still believe that the unexpectedly high voter turnout of more than 72%, along with the decisive 52%-48% outcome, suggest that Parliament received a clear directive to pursue Brexit, despite the demographic and geographical splits.

“Parliament has supreme authority, but it is highly unlikely to reverse the mandate delivered by the voters,” Nicolas Veron of the Brussels think tank Bruegel wrote Saturday.

Of course, the nearly 2 million signatures attached to the petition for a second vote is still a pittance compared with the 17.4 million voters who opted to leave.

Special correspondent Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin contributed to this report.