LONDON — On the day after British voters delivered an astonishing repudiation of Prime Minister Theresa May at the very moment that she had expected to be her crowning glory, she tried to go on as though nothing much had changed. 

She would stay on as prime minister. She would keep her cabinet’s elite circle. Her plans for Brexit would go forward. 

“That’s what people voted for last June,” she announced defiantly outside 10 Downing Street after meeting with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss her new government. “That’s what we’ll deliver. Now let’s get to work.”

But beneath the bravado was a creeping reality: A year after choosing to get out of the European Union, voters had stunned the establishment once more. In the process, they may have thrust a dagger through the heart of a young premiership that only days ago had looked to be on the verge of achieving power of Thatcheresque proportions.

“It’s not clear to me that Theresa May is going to survive the next few days,” said Ian Kearns, co-founder of the European Leadership Network, a London-based think tank. “The level of damage that she’s done to her own brand is immense. The rebellion against her is just getting started.” 

At the least, Kearns and other observers said Friday, May will have to thoroughly rethink her plans for Brexit, only days before critical talks with the E.U. are due to launch. An uncompromising demand for a hard break from Europe may have to be downgraded to a far more modest rupture, Kearns said, perhaps one that does not look much like an exit at all.

Outwardly, May showed no signs of yielding to that pressure Friday. Just hours after her voice broke as she offered her first, shaky 3 a.m. response to an election that would end with her Conservative Party losing its majority in Parliament, she was grim-faced and joyless as she stood in the midday sun in front of her Downing Street offices and announced she would stay on as prime minister. 

“I will now form a government — a government that can provide certainty and lead Britain forward at this critical time for our country,” she said. 

[How the Conservatives could cobble together a governing coalition]

Not once did she mention the election, which she had gambled would give her enhanced powers but instead left her grievously wounded.

Behind the scenes, members of her party were discussing whether to keep her — with some concluding that, sooner or later, she would have to go. Some were taking their case public.

“I don’t believe personally that Theresa May will stay as our prime minister indefinitely,” Heidi Allen, a Tory member of Parliament, told LBC radio. “In my view, it may well be just a period of transition.”

With murmurs of a party coup building, May sought to buy herself time. She reappointed Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond and other top ministers — several of whom are potential plotters and would-be replacements if she is deposed. 

She also promised there would be no delays in negotiations with the E.U., which are scheduled to begin June 19.

“What the country needs more than ever is certainty,” she said. 

But that was one thing Britain clearly lacked. 

The results from Thursday’s vote did not create any immediate path for the country to retreat from the Brexit brink. But the outcome instantly complicated — if not scuttled altogether — May’s meticulously laid strategy for getting out of the E.U., while also heightening doubts that she can reach a deal with European leaders over the next two years.

[Another item for the history books: More women than ever were just elected]

Without an agreement, Britain would crash out of the bloc and face giving up all the privileges of membership. Some lawmakers have pushed for Parliament to be allowed an emergency brake that would keep the country in should the talks fail.

At least, May could be forced to rethink her objectives in the negotiations, perhaps pushing for a softer break than the one she had sold to the public this spring.

Late Friday, May suggested she could be considering a course change, telling broadcasters that she would take time to “reflect” on an election that left her authority in tatters and tipped the scales in favor of her political opponents, including the once-hapless far-left Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Final results in every district nationwide put the Conservatives at 318 seats — eight short of what they would need for a working majority in the 650-member Parliament and well down from the 331 they won just two years ago.

The Labour Party won 262 seats — an unexpected gain of dozens of seats under Corbyn. 

For May, those results were precisely the opposite of what she had hoped. May called the snap election seeking to strengthen her hand in the E.U. negotiations and to further sideline her political critics.

But with her slender majority having vanished overnight, May was put in the humiliating position of having to woo Northern Ireland’s right-wing Democratic Unionist Party — with 10 seats it is Parliament’s fifth-largest — into a deal just to have any hope of mustering the majority needed to keep the Tories in power.

[How a party from Northern Ireland could save May]

Even that could prove difficult. May said outside 10 Downing Street that the DUP would back her government.

But a deal is not yet sealed. The leader of the Democratic Unionists, Arlene Foster, said Friday afternoon that talks were still underway.

When asked whether May would be able to remain as prime minister, Foster told the BBC on Friday that she was unsure, adding, “I think it will be difficult.”

Foster’s party is likely to strike a tough bargain with the Tories. The Democratic Unionists backed leaving the E.U. but have opposed elements of May’s line in the divorce proceedings — especially provisions that could affect trade and movement on either side of the border separating Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland.

The political wreckage of Thursday’s vote also included Paul Nuttall, who stepped down as leader of the U.K. Independence Party. The anti-immigration party had led the charge for Brexit, but its support cratered this year: It won just 2 percent of the vote, compared with 13 percent in 2015.

Scottish nationalists — seeking a boost ahead of an expected second independence referendum — were also dealt a debilitating setback that raised questions about whether the referendum plans will be scrapped.

But the election’s biggest loser was undoubtedly the woman who had decided to call it: May.

[Corbyn’s Labour Party may be No. 2 but still won big in British elections]

The loss was widely interpreted in Britain as a personal repudiation of a politician who seemed to have charmed the country only months ago with her vow to be a “bloody difficult woman” in exit negotiations with her E.U. counterparts. 

Now it is unclear whether she will even make it to the negotiating table when talks begin.

May has vowed a hard break with the bloc, one that leaves Britain outside the single market, the customs union and the European Court of Justice. But she has also promised to deliver a free-trade deal that would preserve the best elements of membership without many of the onerous burdens.

European leaders have insisted that such a sweetheart arrangement is not possible.

On Friday, continental leaders expressed fresh frustration with the latest twist in Britain’s drama-laden departure. 

European Council President Donald Tusk responded to the vote by saying there was “no time to lose” to start the talks, so they can be finished by the spring of 2019.

The E.U. foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, complained that “we still don’t know the British position in the negotiations on Brexit.”

Kearns, of the European Leadership Network, said May’s best hope for keeping her job would be to “bin the entire approach she’s taken so far to Brexit and go back to the drawing board.” 

Instead of the clean break from Europe she’s sought, Kearns said, May would find cross-party support for a softer separation that leaves Britain formally outside the E.U. but with many of the same attachments that define its relationship to the bloc today. 

But without that sort of pivot, he said, May’s time in power is probably running out. 

“If she tries to stick with the same approach, her own party will remove her,” Kearns said, “because they understand that her strategy is doomed to failure.”

Read more

After London, questions mount over approach to domestic extremist groups

With the center all but vanished, Britain now as polarized as the U.S.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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A defiant President Trump on Friday accused former FBI director James B. Comey of committing perjury in his blockbuster Senate testimony and said he was willing to share his version of events under oath with the special counsel overseeing the expanding Russia investigation.

Trump emphatically declared his innocence yet refused to solve a mystery of his own making by stating whether he has tapes of his one-on-one conversations with Comey. Any such recordings could prove which man’s account is accurate, but the president played coy — saying he would wait “a fairly short period of time” to tell the public whether any tapes exist, as he first suggested they might in May.

During a combative news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House, the president Comey’s testimony was politically motivated, contained falsehoods and failed to establish that Trump had colluded with Russians to win last year’s election or had obstructed justice in seeking to end the federal government’s probe.

“No collusion. No obstruction. He’s a leaker,” Trump said of Comey, adding: “We were very, very happy and, frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said. And some of the things that he said just weren’t true.”

[Analysis: Trump thinks he got ‘total vindication’ from Comey. Except he didn’t.]

Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee painted a damning portrait of Trump’s character, and the president waited until Friday morning to break his silence — first in a 6:10 a.m. tweet declaring “total and complete vindication” and then in more detail at the afternoon news conference.

Comey — who testified that he had taken contemporaneous notes of all his conversations with Trump — said he believed the president had fired him because of the Russia probe, told “lies” about Comey’s record at the bureau and sought to redirect the probe away from former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Trump and his aides and allies followed a two-pronged rebuttal strategy: They hung onto snippets of Comey’s testimony as categorical evidence of Trump’s innocence while using other elements to try to impugn the former FBI director’s credibility.

The president, who followed the advice of his lawyers to refrain from commenting Thursday, was characteristically pugnacious in his presentation Friday and opted mostly to deliver broadsides rather than address the details of Comey’s testimony.

Jonathan Karl of ABC News drilled down on a couple of key facts, however, beginning with Comey’s statement that Trump had told him that he hoped he would let the Flynn investigation go. Trump replied three times, “I didn’t say that.”

Regarding Comey’s assertion that Trump had asked him during a one-on-one dinner in the White House to pledge his loyalty, the president said, “I hardly know the man. I’m not going to say, ‘I want you to pledge allegiance.’ Who would do that?”

Karl pointed out to Trump that Comey had made these statements under oath and asked the president — who has a long and well-documented history of telling falsehoods — whether he would be willing to provide his version of events under oath.

“One hundred percent,” Trump said.

Karl also asked if he was willing to speak about the issue with Robert S. Mueller III, the former FBI director who is now leading the Russia investigation as special counsel. Trump said he would.

“I would be glad to tell him exactly what I just told you,” Trump said.

Just as his personal lawyer and surrogates had on Thursday, Trump branded Comey a “leaker” on Friday for revealing in his testimony that he had asked a friend to pass along personal notes of Comey’s conversations with Trump to a reporter, with the aim of prompting the appointment of a special counsel. The Justice Department later appointed Mueller as special counsel.

Trump wrote in his Friday morning tweet, “WOW, Comey is a leaker!” And he repeated the charge at the Rose Garden news conference, telling reporters, “He’s a leaker.”

The term leaker is typically used to refer to a government employee who gives classified documents or state secrets to the news media. The case is different with Comey, a former government employee sharing personal notes and recollections that are not classified.

[James Comey admitted to authorizing a leak. That’s extraordinary.]

Still, Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s personal lawyer, was preparing to file a complaint early next week over Comey’s testimony to the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s Office and the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to a person close to the legal team.

A spokesman for the Justice Department Inspector General declined to comment.

On Thursday, Kasowitz alleged in his statement to reporters that Comey “unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the president.”

Trump’s surrogates fanned out on television news shows to parrot the president’s charge that Comey improperly leaked information.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) said on Fox News Channel, “I think we’re going to have to look at his basically employment contract with the FBI as to what he would keep confidential and what he would reveal. So, I think there has to be an investigation. Am I ready to say he committed a crime? No, not until we look into all this.”

Despite Trump’s declaration of “no obstruction,” Democrats on Capitol Hill raised the prospect that he may have obstructed justice, based on Comey’s testimony, and called for additional investigations.

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), a senior member of both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, said in a statement, “I see firsthand the distinction between the legal and counterintelligence aspects presented by Director Comey’s testimony this week. It is my strong recommendation that the Judiciary Committee investigate all issues that raise a question of obstruction of justice.”

Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who are investigating the Russia issue on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter to White House counsel Donald F. McGahn asking whether the White House has any recordings or memoranda of Trump’s conversations with Comey, or whether any have existed in the past. They asked the White House to produce them to the committee by June 23.

Schiff and Conaway also sent a letter to Comey requesting he share any notes or memoranda in his possession about his talks with Trump.

[Behind Trump’s temporary silence: Why the counterpuncher let others do the punching]

Trump held his news conference alongside the visiting president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, who lavished praise on his American host.

The visit came after Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son who helps run the family’s real estate companies while his father is in office, reportedly traveled to Romania in mid-May for a hunting and sightseeing trip. A Trump Organization spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about Trump Jr.’s travels to Romania.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded definitively that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election to try to influence its outcome in Trump’s favor. But in his Rose Garden remarks, Trump repeated his claim that the probe into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia is merely the creation of his political opponents.

“That was an excuse by the Democrats who lost an election that some people think they shouldn’t have lost, because it’s almost impossible for the Democrats to lose the Electoral College, as you know,” Trump said. “You have to run up the whole East Coast and you have to win everything as a Republican, and that’s just what we did.”

In fact, Trump lost most of the states on the Eastern seaboard (he carried only Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and a portion of Maine). He won his electoral college majority by carrying a number of hotly-contested states in the industrial Midwest, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin.