As morning broke after a momentous night of European election results, Nigel Farage seemed remarkably clear-headed as he contemplated the chaos his party had sown in Britain’s ailing two-party system.
Mr Farage, noted for his enthusiasm for a pint, had much to celebrate, having topped the UK poll with 32 per cent of the vote and winning 28 seats. But his threat to turn his single issue party into a force at the next general election was delivered with cool menace.
“We’ve done amazing things in six weeks,” Mr Farage said. “I’m not pretending that to set up the infrastructure to fight 650 seats, perhaps for an October election, is easy. But that work starts this afternoon.”
Mr Farage, whose presence helped to scare David Cameron into holding the EU referendum in 2016, now again has the Conservatives dancing to his tune, with significant implications for the Tory leadership campaign.
Boris Johnson, the frontrunner to succeed Mrs May, has been telling Tory MPs that only he can stop Mr Farage and that if the EU does not offer Britain a better exit deal, he will take Britain out without a deal.
Other Eurosceptic leadership contenders, including Dominic Raab and Andrea Leadsom, have the same hard Brexit message. Even centrists such as Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary, have said they are willing to consider a no-deal exit.
But while Tory leadership challengers engage in a bidding war to win the support of Eurosceptic party members — many of whom admitted to voting for the Brexit party in these elections — the threat to Conservative unity is obvious.
Philip Hammond, chancellor, on Sunday refused to rule out voting a Conservative government out of office rather than allow a Eurosceptic Tory prime minister to oversee a no-deal exit.
However the European elections posed an equally serious challenge to Jeremy Corbyn, as the Labour leader surveyed results which saw his party bleed votes to the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats.
“Labour have had an atrocious night,” said Jo Swinson, a possible successor to Vince Cable as Lib Dem leader. “It’s time for them to get off the Brexit fence.”
Within minutes of the polls closing, senior Labour figures including Emily Thornberry, shadow foreign secretary, and Tom Watson, deputy leader, were stepping up pressure on Mr Corbyn to come out unequivocally for a second referendum.
“Following the disastrous EU election results, Labour urgently needs to rethink its Brexit position and realign with members and voters,” Mr Watson said on Twitter. “For Britain’s sake, we must find our voice and fast. I want to hear from members and supporters.”
Mr Corbyn, who voted to leave the European Economic Community in the 1975 referendum, insists that Labour is trying to represent both Remain and Leave voters: he had been in talks with the Tories earlier this month about delivering Brexit.
The sight of the Lib Dems winning the biggest vote share in London — even in his own Islington constituency — was a clear warning sign that the policy is driving the party’s overwhelmingly pro-EU voters to other parties.
In Peterborough, where Labour is defending the seat in a parliamentary by-election on June 6, the Brexit party won 38 per cent of the vote with Labour on 17 per cent, a reminder that outside the big cities Mr Corbyn’s party is also losing Leave voters.
“We’re a strong Remain party but we couldn’t ignore that 52 per cent voted Leave, we can’t turn our back on those people,” John McDonnell, shadow chancellor, told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
But he added that it was likely the Tories would soon have a hard Brexiter as leader. “We have got to move forward now, bring people together and block a no deal and if that means going back to the people, so be it.”
Richard Burgon, an ally of Mr Corbyn, told the BBC’s Today programme that the Tories could soon try to engineer a no-deal exit under a new leader, possibly Mr Johnson.
“In those circumstances, we must do everything we can and use whatever mechanism we can to stop a disastrous no deal,” he said.
There were also recriminations in the new Change UK party, which polled just over 3 per cent in the European elections, with speculation the new group would soon try to merge with the Lib Dems.
Heidi Allen, the party’s interim leader, suggested the party could join the same “vehicle” as the Lib Dems and had advocated tactical voting ahead of the European Parliament elections.
Anna Soubry, another Change UK MP and former Tory business minister, said: “It’s bizarre for an interim leader to tell people on the eve of a poll not to vote for their own party”.
