German chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out starting informal talks with London about the UK’s exit from the EU before Britain formally asks the bloc to begin official negotiations.

“Before Great Britain sends this notice, there are no informal discussions about exit procedures. The sequencing must be observed,” said Steffen Seibert, the chancellor’s spokesman, writes Stefan Wagstyl in Berlin.

Mr Seibert also emphasised that it was up to the UK to decide when it would launch the process which begins once the British government officially notifies the EU institutions it is triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, opening a two-year window for talks.

If negotiations cannot be concluded within this timeframe, talks can only be extended with the assent of all the EU’s 27 member states.

Mr Seibert declined to comment on whether it was right to wait until October, the time when the outgoing British prime minister David Cameron has suggested a new prime minister might be in place.

He said that the German government did not want “an adjourned game”. This could be “in nobody’s interest also in Europe”.

Boris Johson, Britain’s most prominent ‘Leave’ campaigner, has said he will not evoke Article 50 in “haste”. UK chancellor George Osborne said this morning formal talks can only start once “there is a clear view about what new arrangement we are seeking with our European neighbours”.

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