Europe’s media have acknowledged both the scale of Boris Johnson’s achievement and Labour’s abysmal electoral performance, but after three and a half years of chaos and confusion have expressed gratitude, above all, that Brexit seems to be finally under way.

“Love him or hate him, with his faux-dishevelled look, his scorn for detail and above all his simplistic, endlessly repeated ‘get Brexit done’, said Le Monde, “Boris Johnson has nonetheless won his bet in the most masterly manner.”

The Labour party, on the other hand, suffered a “veritable debacle. It paid the price for the ambiguity of its message on Brexit, a very radical programme and above all the badly dented image of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn.”

Mainly, though, the paper said: “The British have decided. They have confirmed, by a wide margin, the result of the 2016 referendum and confirmed they want Brexit – or at least, that they want the result of the referendum respected.”

Libération agreed, headlining its story: “Boris triumphs, Labour collapses and Brexit is almost there.” There could be no more doubt, the paper said: “No more delay, no more uncertainty, no more half-choices: the British have confirmed their choice, for the second time – they want to leave the European Union.”

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In Germany, despite widespread aversion to Johnson’s personality and resentment of the very fact of the Brexit vote, many breathed a sigh of relief.



“Brexit remains a bad decision, but clarity is what matters most at this stage,” tweeted Henrik Enderlein, an influential professor of politics at Berlin’s Hertie School for Governance. “I feel sorry for my remainer friends, but I also feel somewhat relieved for the EU. It’s time to move on.”



The Süddeutsche Zeitung said Johnson was the “lesser evil” to an incompetent Labour leader, but “an evil he is nonetheless, because he has spent the last three years orchestrating an orgy of political destruction whose sole aim was to give prime minister Johnson an overwhelming majority for the exit from the EU”.

The paper lamented that no one had shown voters “the path out of the Brexit undergrowth. Nobody separated truth from lies.” This was the most important election in decades, and they had made ample use of their right to vote: “So it was, we must conclude, a deliberate, clear decision, overwhelmingly made. A decision in favour of seduction and simplicity.”

The country’s biggest online news site, Der Spiegel, was more succinct: “The turkeys voted for Christmas,” it said. Johnson had won big and could rule uncontested, it said, “but what has been lost is decency, sincerity and integrity”.

In the Netherlands, De Volkskrant said Johnson’s gamble of “sending his countrymen to the polls in the dark days before Christmas worked out remarkably well. The Conservative party now has the largest Commons majority since Margaret Thatcher.”

But, the paper warned, Johnson had a huge task ahead of him. “He must now respect the confidence that millions of voters in former Labour seats in the north and Midlands have placed in him. This is not the natural stamping ground of the Conservative party.”

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In Italy, Aldo Cazzullo wrote in Corriere della Sera that Europe had “lost London, this time for real”, adding: “The vote confirms that the left can’t expect to regain the popular vote with recipes of the past: taxes, confiscations, nationalisation.”

Spain’s press were unanimous: “Boris Johnson wins an overwhelming victory that clears the way for Brexit,” said El País. “Boris Johnson wins an absolute majority to deliver Brexit,” said El Mundo. “Boris Johnson takes the election by storm and will have a clear path to delivering Brexit,” said eldiario.es.

El País’s London correspondent, Rafa de Miguel, noted that, for all his personality and popularity, Johnson remains something of a “blank page”.

Despite all the Donald Trump comparisons, he said, perhaps the politician the prime minister most resembles is Ronald Reagan, “able to delegate to a competent team, indifferent to detail and blessed with the virtue of being able to transmit an optimistic version of the future at a time when it is most needed”.

Drawing parallels with the ongoing battle for Catalan independence, El Mundo’s correspondent, Carlos Fresneda, pointed out that the Scottish National party’s strong showing on Thursday would serve only to strengthen its calls for a second referendum on secession.

With Philip Oltermann in Berlin, Angela Giuffrida in Rome and Sam Jones in Madrid