David Cameron will travel to Brussels on Tuesday to explain to Europe’s stunned leaders why Britain has voted for Brexit, as Conservative MPs pushed to speed up the process of replacing him as prime minister.

Cameron will meet the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the European council president, Donald Tusk, before a working dinner with his counterparts from the 27 other member states, at which the verdict in Thursday’s historic referendum will be the only item on the agenda.

The Brussels summit comes against a background of continuing financial market turmoil, as anxious investors weigh up the economic impact of Brexit, despite the chancellor insisting on Monday morning: “Our economy is about as strong as it could be to confront the challenge our country now faces.”

Related: UK loses triple-A credit rating in wake of Brexit vote

The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s announced on Monday night that it was stripping Britain of its prized AAA credit rating, underlining the risks that may lie ahead.

The executive of the Conservative 1922 committee of backbench MPs announced that it would fast-track the process of replacing the prime minister against the backdrop of turmoil in financial markets.

Candidates hoping to succeed Cameron will be jockeying for position – with Boris Johnson and Theresa May widely seen as frontrunners – with nominations for the Conservative party leadership race set to open on Tuesday.

Cameron’s fellow EU leaders are likely to be keen to hear what Britain will demand in the forthcoming negotiations, but the prime minister is determined not to speculate about what formal relationship with the EU his successor will demand.

Instead, he will try to explain the British public’s rejection of EU membership. “He’s likely to talk about a number of factors that he thinks were issues in the campaign, and in the debate,” his spokeswoman said.

“He will want to encourage people to think about how both the UK and the EU need to work together to make the best of the decision the British people have taken.”

Related: Will article 50 ever be triggered?

She added that he would not pre-empt any decision on when to invoke article 50, the formal process for withdrawal from the EU. “He will reiterate that article 50 is a matter for the next prime minister.”

Cameron announced his resignation on Friday morning, in the aftermath of the public’s vote to reject EU membership, by 52-48%.

He said he would stay on until a successor could be appointed, before the party’s annual conference in October – but under the new timetable, nominations will close on Thursday and the decision will be made by 2 September.

Graham Brady, who chairs the executive of the 1922 committee, which met on Monday lunchtime, said a quick decision was in Britain’s best interests.

“Things are in our hands, and we are moving as quickly as possible,” said Brady. “We think that the party and the country want certainty.”

Their recommendation needs to be approved by the board of the Conservative party, which meets on Tuesday, and the full 1922 committee on Wednesday.

Brady added that if a new prime minister presses ahead with the crucial renegotiations, they could then call a general election to allow the public to give their verdict on Britain’s new relationship with the EU.

Related: Britain to have new prime minister by 2 September

“We have a big, complicated task to accomplish,” he told Sky News. “I think it is entirely reasonable to expect that the government should embark on that, get on with that, seek to negotiate as good an outcome as we can before the people then are asked to approve or reject that in a general election.”

If there are more than two candidates for leader, Conservative MPs will hold rounds of voting, the first of which would be on 5 July, with the least popular hopeful being eliminated each time. The party’s members would then be given a choice – almost certainly – of two contenders.

Cameron held the first cabinet meeting since the referendum result on Monday, with ministers on both sides of the Brexit debate paying tribute to his premiership – and discussing how they can continue to fulfil the government’s manifesto, including on social reform, in the little time left before Cameron hands over to a new prime minister.

May, who backed the prime minister’s pro-remain stance in the referendum campaign but made few public appearances in support of the cause, hopes to be seen as a unity candidate to bridge the divide in the party. She also burnished her Eurosceptic credentials by backing a withdrawal from the European convention on human rights.

May is widely expected to announce herself as a candidate and is likely to be backed by a significant number of MPs as the “stop Boris” choice.

Related: George Osborne's reassuring words fail to comfort the markets

One of the arguments being used to tempt Tory backbenchers to support her is that there would be less need to hold a general election. This is because she was in a significant position in government when the Conservatives stood on their manifesto at the last election and would therefore be better able to argue for carrying on with the same mandate.

In contrast, Johnson was not in government then, which would put more pressure on him to seek his own mandate.

Johnson, the former London mayor, arrived with an entourage at Portcullis House on Monday after spending the weekend holed up with allies at his country home. The justice secretary, Michael Gove, who chaired Vote Leave, is expected to play a key role in Johnson’s leadership campaign.

Earlier, Johnson had set out his thoughts about life after Brexit in his Telegraph column, claiming the UK would be able to introduce a points-based immigration system while maintaining access to the European single market – a possibility that has already been rubbished by EU diplomats as a “pipe dream”.

Some pro-remain Conservative MPs who watched Johnson arrive said they would do everything they could to stop to him taking over as leader of the party.

One MP said they had been taken aback by the level of antipathy towards Johnson after the bitter referendum campaign; and there were growing questions about whether he is the right person to lead the complex Brexit negotiations.

However, other challengers may yet emerge, including the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, Amber Rudd, the energy secretary who made a series of personal attacks on Johnson in the televised referendum debate, and the work and pensions secretary, Stephen Crabb. Liam Fox, the pro-Brexit MP from the more socially conservative wing of the party, has not ruled out running.

Crabb has been canvassing MPs about the possibility of running on a joint ticket with Sajid Javid, the business secretary, who would serve as his chancellor. Javid will face questions on his intentions on Tuesday when he hosts a meeting of business leaders to reassure them about the consequences of Brexit. Both men come from working-class backgrounds, and see themselves as an antidote to the Etonian Johnson.

Johnson sought to play down the disruption in the financial markets that had followed the public’s decision, saying sterling had been “stable”. But one Tory source ridiculed his comments, describing him as “the pound shop comical Ali of British politics”.

A Tory MP who supported the remain campaign claimed “the liars had won the day” on the referendum. But they argued that when the electorate realised they couldn’t have everything they’d been promised, they wouldn’t want “the liar in chief”.

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SUNDERLAND, England — In places like Sunderland, with its once-robust shipyards silent and dead and its citizens leery of both London and Brussels, the idea of the European Union never really took hold.

Although the once-proud working-class city in England’s northeast heartland benefited from the bloc, the campaign that became known as “Brexit” found many adherents and brought long-suppressed grievances into the open.

And when the decision to pull out of the European Union sent markets into a tailspin, Ken Walker, a retired construction worker, was unfazed.

“I don’t have any money in the stock market,” Mr. Walker, 59, a retired construction worker, said as he drank a pint of beer in a pub. “So what’s it to me?”

The pub, called the Speculation, still had “Vote Leave” posters on its walls, and a fellow drinker exclaimed “Aye!” and banged the counter in agreement.

Sunderland stunned the country when voters overwhelmingly opted to leave Europe in Thursday’s referendum, by 61 percent to 39 percent. It was a far higher vote for Britain’s exit than pollsters had predicted, and it was the first sign that Prime Minister David Cameron’s gamble on staying in the bloc had lost.

Sunderland’s citizens seem to have voted against their own interests. Not only has the city been a big recipient of European money, it is also the home of a Nissan car factory, Britain’s largest, and automobiles produced there are exported, duty free, to Europe. The plant, which absorbed workers from the dying shipyards after it opened 30 years ago, became a symbol of the benefits of European Union membership, and Nissan opposed the British exit.

Yet Edward Pennal, 64, a former army mechanic who voted to leave, took the uncertainty in stride, dismissing it as scaremongering. “No, I can’t see them cutting off ties,” he said of Nissan, because the company has received government grants to stay in Sunderland. And the pound’s fall is a good thing for exports, he said. “I was very pleased with the result.”

Sunderland’s decision was also a vote against the Labour Party, which pushed for Britain to remain in the union but is no longer seen by many voters in Sunderland as a champion of the working class. Instead, they and working-class voters across Britain are increasingly moving right over the issue of immigration, switching to the anti-Brussels, anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party, which campaigned for the exit so Britain could control its borders.

Nationwide, young voters provided much of the support for the Remain campaign, but that was not the case in Sunderland.

John Todd, 18, an information technology apprentice, voted for the first time, and said he supported the U.K. Independence Party.

“We’re segregated from the south, and the north is a barren wasteland,” he said, wearing a heavy black leather jacket with metal studs despite the summer heat. “It’s us against them.”

“The E.U. is a mystery to us,” he added. “We’ve never heard about it up here.”

The outcome of the vote in the large section of industrial northeast England that includes Sunderland exposed deep regional divisions and a rift between classes — a working class that feels it has lost out from globalization, and a more mobile, educated class of people who have prospered from free trade and movement.

Similar trends are emerging in France, where Marine Le Pen’s National Front has had success in poor cities across the country’s former industrial heartland. Now, Ms. Le Pen is calling for a similar referendum in France to pull out of the European Union.

In Sunderland, a city of 273,000 on the North Sea coast, there were few signs of “bregret” or “regrexit” — terms shared on social media to describe the pangs of remorse some felt as they watched billions of dollars get wiped off world markets.

Pro-Leave voters said they had nothing to lose because they had little to gain from globalization in the first place.

“Give Brexit a chance,” said Maria Taylor, 58, a florist on a street where rows of brick houses, a legacy of the Industrial Revolution, shove against one another. “It can’t get worse than what’s been going on already,” she added.

In Washington, a run-down neighborhood close to the Nissan plant, shops on Co-operative Street appeared as if out of a time warp: a hairdresser with bonnet hair dryers, a candy shop where a single ceiling bulb illuminates rows of dusty containers filled with stuck-together sweets.

To people like Mr. Walker, the turmoil in the financial markets was a distant rumble, a problem for the rich “down south” in London and for those with enough resources to take a bet on the vast flows of speculative money that shift around the globe.

As deindustrialization and other factors have hollowed what was once a manufacturing stronghold, the region has struggled to catch up with its wealthier southern neighbors despite efforts by recent governments to bridge the divide.

“All the industries, everything, has gone,” said Michael Wake, 55, forklift operator, gesturing toward Roker Beach, once black from the soot of the shipyards. “We were powerful, strong. But Brussels and the government, they’ve taken it all away.”

In 1988, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher closed the last of the shipyards that once lined the River Wear. The European Union contributed a 45 million pound, or $60 million, aid package to help laid-off workers, but Sunderland never recovered from the loss. It consistently has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, about 9 percent.

The referendum, Mr. Wake said, was an opportunity to “poke the eye” of Mr. Cameron and the London establishment.

Fears over job security from an influx of cheap European laborers was another motivation. Heather Govan, 28, a decorator, said cheap labor helped big businesses by keeping costs down, but not self-employed people like her.

“I’ve got nothing against immigrants,” she said, adding that people in low-skilled jobs have less bargaining power now. “The working class is disconnected from the middle class who have rich mammies and daddies,” Ms. Govan said. “The working class will stand up against the Tories because they don’t give a damn about the north!”

Some residents, however, said they had benefited from European Union membership.

“I’m shocked — it’s bad for the industry,” said John Thompson, 53, who has worked for more than 30 years in a components factory. “There is a lot of uncertainty now, and people who were going to invest here are going to think twice.”

Many engineers in the shipbuilding industry took jobs at Nissan. They became part of an upwardly mobile class able to afford houses along the now soot-free beach.

To them and their families, the European Union is appealing. They can swim at the Sunderland Aquatic Center, a £20 million project with an Olympic-size pool that the European Union helped finance. They can send their children to the sleek, modern Sunderland University campus, which rose on the site of an old shipyard and also received union financing, including grants to help graduates and for apprenticeships.

European Union money also helped establish Sunderland Software City, a business center that offers support and advice to aspiring software entrepreneurs.

However splashy these projects may be, they remain largely inaccessible to Sunderland’s working class. Many cannot afford the £30 monthly fees at the Aquatic Center, and people in the nearby Washington neighborhood said they had never set foot inside.

As for Sunderland University, the tuition, which the government recently raised, is too much for many young people.

“All the money is going back to the rich,” said Ms. Taylor, the florist. “The working class is completely hammered. They’ve sold us down the river.”

John Hall, 54, a neighbor, looked determined. “All the people here are looking out for their grandchildren,” he said, adding, “In 20 years’ time, it would be a better place for them.”

“We’re big, we’re strong enough,” he said. “It might be hard, but we’ll still eat.”

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May was invited to govern the country during an audience with Queen Elizabeth II only minutes after David Cameron visited Buckingham Palace and formally resigned as prime minister.

A photo of May curtsying before a handbag-toting queen signaled the moment that May formally ascended to the country's highest political office.

Minutes later, in her first address outside 10 Downing Street, May delivered a short but striking statement that sketched out her vision as Britain’s first female leader since Margaret Thatcher.

May departed from typical Conservative rhetoric and vowed to fight the “burning injustice” that she said has harmed minorities and women. She also promised to serve the poor and the working class.

Although she did not delve deeper than broad strokes, May emphasized bright horizons for Britain outside the European Union in contrast to gloomy forecasts from those who consider the referendum outcome a monumental mistake.

“As we leave the European Union, we will forge a bold, new, positive role for ourselves in the world, and we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us,” said May, who had leaned toward the pro-E.U. side before last month’s vote on Britain’s E.U. future.

She also said she would vigorously defend the "precious bond of the United Kingdom," a nod to her determination to beat back a revitalized secessionist movement in Scotland driven by opposition to the decision to leave the European Union.

After May spoke, she immediately went to work, inviting top Tory politicians to Downing Street to accept jobs in her cabinet.

Boris Johnson, the former London mayor and leading Brexit advocate, was named foreign secretary, making the flamboyant leader the country's top diplomat. The appointment came less than two weeks after Johnson's ambitions to take the country's top job were dashed by the last-minute entrance into the race of the man who was to be his campaign manager, Michael Gove.

Philip Hammond, who had been the foreign secretary, will now be the country's top finance official as chancellor of the exchequer.

George Osborne, formerly the chancellor and once considered the most likely man to succeed Cameron as prime minister, resigned from the government in the reshuffle.

Amber Rudd, the energy and climate change secretary, was named to May's old job: home secretary. May had earlier indicated she would appoint women to top posts.

Earlier Wednesday, Cameron went through his final, mostly ceremonial, paces as leader.

He received a standing ovation in Parliament, and he declared Britain "much stronger" than when he took office six years ago as he left Downing Street for the last time as prime minister.

Amid gusting winds and bursts of rain, Cameron gave a short statement outside the prime minister's residence with his wife and three young children by his side. He thanked the country for the "greatest honor of my life" and wished his successor luck guiding Britain through its difficult E.U. split.

It was Cameron's bad bet on the E.U. — in calling a referendum that he lost — that set off Wednesday's transition, just a year after Cameron won a resounding victory that could have kept him in office until 2020.

When he appeared on the green benches of Parliament earlier Wednesday, Cameron took some jabs from opponents who blamed him for calling that vote. He was also cheered by supporters, and his premiership was celebrated by fellow Conservatives who congratulated him on cutting the deficit, enacting gay marriage and appointing women to key posts — one of whom took his place.

May became the 13th prime minister to air-kiss the hand of Queen Elizabeth II, who at 90 has seen leaders of government come and go on average every five years during her six-decade-plus reign.

But amid the pomp and circumstance was the serious business of a nation facing the gravest challenge to its identity since it shed its empire.

May, 59, is handed a daunting task from the 49-year-old Cameron that neither wanted: taking the country out of the European Union.

May, who is just the second female prime minister in British history after Thatcher, won the job on Monday after her sole rival, Andrea Leadsom, unexpectedly dropped out. May had already won the first round of voting — among Conservative members of Parliament — last week. With only one candidate in the race, a planned summer-long vote of rank-and-file party members was called off.

May takes the keys to 10 Downing Street after six years directing the country’s domestic security as home affairs secretary.

In that time, she developed a reputation as a steely yet cautious manager. Colleagues have described her as tough-minded and well-briefed on her portfolio of issues, which included the fight against Islamist extremist violence and policing of the country’s borders.

She has been a hawk on the need to cut immigration and had pushed for a greater government role in electronic surveillance.

Her views on foreign and economic policy are less known. But in her first major speech on the economy this week, her tone was more liberal than expected — emphasizing the need for growing the economy, rather than cutting government spending.

On foreign policy, she has taken a hard line on containing Russia and China. She has also worked closely with colleagues across Europe and in Washington on counterterrorism efforts as Westerners have flocked to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State.

Supporters laud her resolve and her experience. Detractors depict her as stubborn and rigid.

“She’s the best of a bad bunch,” Vince Cable, a Liberal Democrat who worked alongside May as business secretary before last year’s general election, told the BBC.

May's first hours in office include briefings by top advisers on the most pressing problems facing the country. She will also be asked to write, by hand, a "letter of last resort" — the orders given to the commander of Britain's nuclear-armed Trident submarines to be carried out in the event that London is obliterated by an attack and the prime minister is killed. She will have to decide whether her orders are to retaliate, surrender or something in between.

But it is the British exit from the European Union — Brexit — that looms largest.

During the country’s referendum campaign, she was a reluctant advocate for staying in the 28-member bloc.

Since last month’s vote, however, she has repeatedly insisted that the voters’ will should be honored and that “Brexit means Brexit.”

One of her first major decisions as prime minister will be to choose when to begin negotiations. Before her victory was assured Monday, she had said that she would not trigger Article 50 — the never-before-used mechanism for exiting the European Union — before year’s end. But she is likely to come under pressure from European leaders across the English Channel and from Brexit advocates at home to accelerate that timetable.

Once the process has begun, Britain will have just two years to negotiate its way out of the bloc. The time frame is considered short for such a complicated untangling. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told Parliament this week that, in reality, it may take as long as six years.

It all could be moving too fast for British strategy-crafters. Cameron announced his plans to resign soon after the vote, having failed to persuade the country to take his advice and stick with the E.U. despite its flaws. His government had no real plans for what to do the day after a Brexit vote.

A key May lieutenant, Chris Grayling, told the BBC on Wednesday that “we should not rush into triggering Article 50” and that “preparatory work” was still needed before the talks with Europe could begin.

For Cameron, Wednesday represents the disappointingly abrupt end to a premiership that has stretched six years — but was supposed to last as many as 10.

He won office having promised to modernize the Conservative Party and to rescue a then-struggling economy.

His backers say he succeeded on both counts: He pushed through the legalization of gay marriage, a measure that proved the Conservatives could embrace socially liberal positions. And amid steep cuts to government spending, he oversaw a slow but steady expansion of the economy after taking over a country still mired in the aftershocks of global recession.

But Cameron lost his biggest gamble: He had hoped to end a decades-long rift in the country, and especially within his party, between opponents and critics of the E.U. with a national endorsement of the nation’s membership.

Last month’s narrow loss — 52 percent to 48 percent — means he will likely be remembered instead as the prime minister who unintentionally led the country into a messy break with Europe. That outcome could also sever the bonds of the United Kingdom, with Scotland threatening to secede if Britain leaves the European Union.

But Cameron received a generally warm farewell from lawmakers. Customarily a gladiatorial-style grudge match, the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions becomes a nostalgia-tinged farewell when a leader appears for the final time.

Standing two sword lengths from opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, Cameron said he had taken 5,500 questions during his six years, though in his typically jocular style, he added that he would “leave it to others to work out how many I’ve answered.”

The two party leaders also engaged in some final jousting. Cameron described Corbyn, who has stubbornly refused to step down despite losing widespread support, as “the Black Knight in Monty Python,” who loses limb after limb while insisting that “it’s only a flesh wound.”

Cameron concluded on a tender note, saying he would “miss the roar of the crowd” and would be “willing all of you on.”

“You can achieve a lot of things in politics. You can get a lot of things done,” said Cameron, who will now take a place among the Conservative Party members in Parliament’s back benches. “And that in the end — the public service, the national interest — that is what it is all about."

His final line referenced a barb he once directed at one of his predecessors, Tony Blair: “I was the future once,” the still-youthful-looking leader said.

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