The European election results prove the Tories are doomed – but Farage didn’t do well enough to force a no-deal Brexit

The Conservative Party and the Brexit Party have both failed. Labour didn’t do well either, but its setback may be temporary.

Indeed, the Conservatives did better than they deserved to, winning 9 per cent of the vote with no leader, no campaign and a government that failed to do the one thing it was expected to deliver – taking the country out of the EU.

Nigel Farage didn’t do as well as he needed to. Never mind the triumphalism about running a “new party formed six weeks ago”, having a “standing start”, and “winning”. He was campaigning as the leader of the New Improved Ukip, having won 27 per cent of the vote last time, which he managed to increase to 32 per cent.

Considering the scale of Theresa May’s failure to deliver on the supposedly clear instruction of the British people in the referendum, this isn’t good enough to make a difference. Even if Old Degraded Ukip’s 3 per cent of the vote is added to the Brexit Party total, that means only 35 per cent of the voters supported parties explicitly committed to a no-deal exit.

That is no kind of mandate for the new prime minister. Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab have promised to take Britain out of the EU at the end of October, “deal or no deal”. But it is a promise they cannot keep. Parliament will not allow it; and if, as Farage claims, this is a matter of “parliament versus the people”, then the people haven’t voted for it either.

The European election results could be sliced up to support almost any interpretation. Remainers point out that parties committed to staying in the EU won a greater share of the vote – 40 per cent – than the no-deal Brexit bloc. But if it is just Remain versus Leave, then the Tories’ share has to be added to Leave total, taking it to 44 per cent. With only Labour, on 14 per cent, facing both ways.

But the Brexit question is no longer binary. The reason parliament is deadlocked is that it is split three ways between leaving with a deal, leaving without a deal and remaining. And that split reflects public opinion.

Farage’s whole appeal is built on the simplicity of the mandate from the 52 per cent vote three years ago. But if you ask him how to deliver it, he says he wants a no-deal exit, for which there is currently less than 52 per cent support. “This is not a difficult thing to do but to do it you’ve got to believe in it,” he said recently.

Unfortunately for him, just believing in something is not enough to make it happen. That 35 per cent vote on Thursday has to be translated into a 51 per cent majority in the House of Commons. Maybe it could be. Strange things happen in general elections. But it doesn’t seem likely, and a general election at any time before 2022 seems even less likely.

An early election would need at least some Conservative MPs to vote for it. I doubt that Boris Johnson, or Dominic Raab, or Michael Gove, or whoever the next prime minister is, will ask them to.

The new Conservative prime minister cannot hold an election until they deliver Brexit, and they cannot deliver Brexit without holding an election. And even if there were an election, they probably still couldn’t deliver Brexit.

Remainers should be grateful to Theresa May for her historic failure, but should be careful that what they wished for will poison British politics for a long, long time.