Europe’s leaders last night expressed relief that Boris Johnson’s victory would bring “an end to uncertainty” over Brexit as well as sadness that Britain would leave the European Union in 50 days.

They received news of the exit poll and expected Conservative majority as they conducted gruelling late-night talks on the future of EU spending after Brexit. “What’s certain is that clarification seems to have come,” said Amélie de Montchalin, the French European affairs minister in Brussels. “The most important thing is not the way we divorce, it’s what we build afterwards.”

An aide to a European prime minister said that along with a sense of relief was sadness that the EU would lose Britain, one of its most important economies and political players, in