E UROPEAN ELECTIONS are rum affairs, but the latest were stranger than ever. On May 23rd voters went to the polls in elections nobody wanted, as Brexit was meant to happen in March. As expected, Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party stormed into first place, with 32% of the vote and 29 seats. It was a striking result for a party set up only in February, and was five points better than Mr Farage achieved as leader of the UK Independence Party in 2014. Adding in the rump UKIP vote makes the total for parties backing a no-deal Brexit 35%, a big number but less impressive when turnout, though higher than in 2014, was only 37%.

If hard Leavers had a good night, so did hard Remainers. The Liberal Democrats took 20% of the vote and 16 seats, while the Greens got 12% and seven seats. Adding in the new Change UK party, which had a terrible night and won no seats, and the Scottish and Welsh nationalists takes the combined score of pro-Remain, pro-second-referendum parties to 40%, more than the no-dealers.

The big losers were the Tories and Labour. Their combined vote share was just 23%, down from as much as 82% in the 2017 general election and less than half their share in 2014. In effect, the European elections saw the centre squeezed to the advantage of extremes on both sides. On Brexit, the country is more obviously split down the middle than ever.

For an opposition party, Labour’s performance of coming third with just 14% of the vote and ten seats was abject (see article). But it is the collapse of the Tories to a mere 9% of the vote and four seats, the party’s worst election result in 185 years, that will have more immediate consequences, because Theresa May, the prime minister, is resigning. A leadership race starts on June 10th. Some 11 MP s have already put themselves forward. These will be winnowed down by their colleagues to two, who will then be voted on by party members. The hope is that this process finishes by the end of July, with the winner immediately becoming prime minister.

The big question for all candidates is how best to respond to Mr Farage’s success. Many believe that the only way to defeat the Brexit Party now is to back leaving without a deal. Among others, Dominic Raab and Boris Johnson, the front-runner, prefer a deal but want to keep no-deal as an option. Both also insist that Brexit must happen on October 31st, with or without a deal.

Some are more nuanced. Most want to renegotiate Mrs May’s deal, yet are also against no-deal. Michael Gove, the environment secretary, is in this camp. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, has said no-deal is better than no Brexit. But this week he called no-deal “political suicide”. His argument was that trying to force it through could lead to a general election in which the Tories would be annihilated. Rory Stewart, the international development secretary and another candidate, has said he could not support a Tory prime minister who goes for no-deal.