Turmoil over ‘Brexit’ spreads
As Labour Party splits into factions, Scots, other foes seek to stay in EU
LONDON — Britain’s political crisis intensified on Sunday after its decision to leave the European Union, with the opposition Labour Party splitting into warring camps, Scotland’s leader suggesting that its local Parliament might try to block the departure and many Britons wondering if there is a plausible way for the nation to reconsider its drastic choice.
The hostilities in the Labour Party broke out as the battle lines became clearer among the governing Conservatives, left in turmoil by the vote on the EU and the subsequent announcement by Prime Minister David Cameron that he will resign once his party chooses a successor.
Michael Gove, the justice minister and a leader of the “Leave” campaign, threw his support to the former London mayor Boris Johnson, the most prominent figure in the anti-Europe movement. Aides to Theresa May, the home secretary, who backed the “Remain” side in the referendum on Thursday, were calling legislators to seek their support to take on Johnson.
The British news media reported that close allies of Cameron also were working to stop Johnson, reflecting the sense of betrayal on Downing Street over Johnson’s decision to tie his political ambitions to the movement to leave Europe.
Hanging over the jockeying for power was intensifying discussion of whether the British exit, or “Brexit,” might somehow be avoided or circumvented. Cameron has said he will leave to his successor the decision on whether and when to begin formal divorce proceedings,
and neither Johnson nor Gove has been demanding such a step, leaving open at least the possibility that Britain could negotiate new terms of membership with Brussels and hold another referendum.
Johnson said from the start of the campaign that a vote to leave would push EU nations into a new negotiation with Britain to keep it in the bloc. Leaders on the Continent have little appetite at the moment for such a deal, and circumventing the clear will of British voters would appear politically problematic for whoever succeeds Cameron.
But both Britain and the EU have a tradition of muddling through crises and finding compromises to avoid the worst outcomes.
Sunday’s developments underscored how the stunning vote to leave the EU has upended politics and exacerbated ideological and regional strains in Britain, leaving the nation with no unifying figure, at risk of coming apart and facing jittery financial markets.
The turmoil spread on Sunday to the Labour Party, whose leader, Jeremy Corbyn, a leftist, now faces a challenge from members of Parliament who have never favored him.
Early Sunday, Corbyn abruptly fired his shadow foreign secretary — the party’s spokesman on foreign affairs — to try to head off a coup begun by some Labour members of Parliament disappointed with Corbyn’s campaign to keep Britain in Europe.
With the Conservatives in disarray and the possibility of another general election within the year, some Labour legislators see this as a good moment to try to dethrone Corbyn, 67, who they think would lead the party to electoral disaster.
Al least 11 of the Labour shadow Cabinet’s 30 members, not counting the foreign secretary, resigned Sunday as a signal of their opposition to his leadership. Corbyn’s office insisted that he would remain party leader and would beat back any challenge by appealing to grass-roots Labour Party members who elected him overwhelmingly in the first place.
Corbyn faces a vote of confidence, which was called for on Friday, after the referendum, by two lower-ranking Labour legislators.
“If a general election is called later this year, which is a very real prospect, we believe that under Jeremy’s leadership we could be looking at political oblivion,” Margaret Hodge, who proposed the no-confidence motion, wrote in a letter to fellow Labour legislators.
Adding to the confusion about how Britain would proceed, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said Sunday that the Scottish Parliament might try to block the British exit from the EU by withholding legislative consent.
“You’re not going to vote for something that is not in Scotland’s interests,” she said.
It was not clear that the devolved Scottish Parliament had the power to veto a British exit, with constitutional scholars in this country, which famously lacks a formal constitution, differing on the question.
“I find it hard to believe that there wouldn’t be that requirement,” Sturgeon said of the need for Scotland’s approval. “I suspect that the U.K. government will take a very different view on that, and we’ll have to see where that discussion ends up.”
Because the Scotland Act of 1998 binds the Scottish Parliament to act in accordance with EU law, some argue that the Parliament’s consent would be required to leave. The same might hold true for the devolved parliaments of Wales, which supported Brexit, and Northern Ireland, which did not.
A fierce proponent of remaining within the EU, Sturgeon said Scotland would insist on another independence referendum if Britain pulled out and would try to negotiate with the Europeans to maintain Scottish membership.
Sturgeon’s remarks only fueled discussion of whether Britain might choose to seek a way to sidestep the results of the referendum. The formal process of unwinding Britain’s membership in the EU begins only when the British government invokes Article 50 of the treaty governing the bloc’s operations. Yet Cameron has declined to do so, and Johnson and other leaders of the Leave campaign have avoided being pinned down on the issue.
Some suggest that a newly elected British Parliament might block an exit if a new referendum were a stated commitment of the victorious party.
But for the moment, with Cameron on his way out and Corbyn possibly joining him, thoughts of how to avoid Brexit seemed a parlor game next to the political battles the vote has unleashed.