Brexit: Tories embrace no-deal, Labour a second referendum

Nigel Farage’s shock success in the EU elections has forced Conservative leadership contenders to take a tougher line on EU.

Tory leadership contenders Michael Gove and Boris Johnson have now embraced leaving the EU with or without a deal. Picture: AFP.

Conservative leadership contenders have embraced a no-deal Brexit to see off the threat of Nigel Farage as the European election results pushed both main parties further away from a compromise.

Leadership candidate Dominic Raab said that the Tories’ disastrous performance meant the party needed to show “unflinching resolve” to “get on and leave the EU” even without a deal. Esther McVey, the former work and pensions secretary, warned that a cross-party Brexit agreement was now “not possible”.

They were joined by other leading Brexiteer candidates, including Boris Johnson and Andrea Leadsom, who said that Sunday night’s results made leaving the EU “decisively” more important than avoiding a no-deal departure in October.

Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, will say today that the party will face an “existential” crisis if it has not delivered Brexit before the next election.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn, whose party slumped to third place behind the Liberal Democrats in the poll, shifted Labour’s policy and said that he was now in favour of any Brexit deal being put to a second referendum.

In a letter to his MPs, he said it was clear that the deadlock in parliament could be broken only by a general election or another public vote. “We are ready to support a public vote on any deal,” he added.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor of the exchequer, went further and suggested that Labour could back Remain in any second referendum. “We’re saying quite clearly, if there can be a deal, great, but it needs to go back to the people,” he said. “If it’s a no-deal, we’ve got to block it and the one way of doing that is going back to the people and arguing the case against it because it could be catastrophic for our economy.”

The polarisation of the two main parties came as their share of the vote collapsed to record lows while the public flocked to opponents with decisive Brexit policies. Turnout was the second highest for a UK European election, at 37 per cent. The highest, 38.5 per cent, was in 2004.

Mr Farage’s new Brexit Party came from a standing start to top the poll, winning 31.6 per cent of the vote - four points more than his former party, the UK Independence Party (Ukip), in 2014.

The Liberal Democrats had their best European election performance, coming second, beating the Tories and Labour and gaining one in five of all votes. Labour was pushed into third place and all but wiped out in Scotland, where it earned 9 per cent of the vote. It was also pushed into third place in Wales behind the Brexit Party and Plaid Cymru.

The Conservatives recorded their worst electoral performance in 200 years, coming fifth behind the Greens with only 9 per cent of the vote.

A triumphant Mr Farage warned that the next Conservative leader must take Britain out of the EU by the end of October or face a reckoning with his party, which he pledged would contest every seat at the next general election. He added that the failure of the two main parties to achieve Brexit was being seen as “an act of betrayal by countless millions of people who live outside these postcodes in central London and haven’t changed their view”.

The Tory leadership contenders, who were joined yesterday by Sajid Javid, the home secretary, adapted their positions in response to Mr Farage’s victory.