Now that the European Parliament elections are over and the results mostly known, the question is "what has changed ?". The answer has to be "very little".
As in 2014, those who favour a quick exit from the European Union voted in droves for the main proponents of such a measure, now the Brexit party; those who favour stopping Brexit altogether voted for the Liberal Democrats, giving that party a huge boost form their dire result in 2014. The losers were the Labour Party, riven by divisions and failing to send out any clear policy message, and the Conservatives whose traditional supporters deserted them in consequence of Theresa May's appallingly bad attempts to negotiate the UK's exit from the EU. From 25 seats 10 years ago, the Conservatives now have only 3 - if that isn't political collapse, I don't know what is.
However, all of this mayhem has changed very little. While members of the political elite have come trotting out to claim all manner of things, mostly using the results to justify whichever course they themselves favour, it's really been a case of "smoke and mirrors" accompanied by "lies, damned lies and statistics". Brexiteers have shouted that the results demonstrate a clear demand for a quick Brexit, while Remainers have claimed that they show an obvious desire for either another referendum or for Brexit to be abandoned completely. In support of this latter aim, Remainers have continued to use entirely unsupported, and unsupportable, claims that any "form" of Brexit will be damaging to our country and a "No Deal" Brexit will be economically catastrophic. In making such claims they blithely ignore the fact that the identical claims that have been made for the last 3 years have proved to be nothing but scare stories, with the UK's economy performing significantly better than the other economies of the EU.
The result is that entrenched positions remain entrenched. The Labour Party is interested only in gaining power and will now do whatever it things will help it in this ambition; if this means that it moves to support calls for another referendum, that is what it will do. For the Conservative Party, mired in internal turmoil, its new leader will have to decide whether to pursue Brexit at any cost or to adopt a softer approach in order to try to bring the party back together and to regain lost ground. The Liberal Democrats must just be hoping that Brexit carries on being an issue as it's clear that they are currently benefitting enormously from the confusion elsewhere.
What is astonishing is that a party which didn't exist 2 months ago has not only done well but has trounced the rest. The Brexit Party has topped the polls across most of England and Wales and gained almost a third of the total votes; it is clearly the most popular party, gaining 28 seats in the new European Parliament. Whether it can achieve a similarly spectacular result should there be a general election in the near future is another matter although its leader, the charismatic Nigel Farage, is promising to produce a full manifesto for such an eventuality. If there is a general election and The Brexit Party does anything like this well, it spells serious problems for both the conservatives and Labour; it would almost certainly mean a hung parliament with, who knows what outcome.
However, in the final analysis, nothing has really changed very much. These were elections for the European Parliament and have little immediate bearing on the real everyday lives of voters; they are, therefore, inclined to vote more for what they believe in than for traditional party loyalties; in a general election, things would inevitably be different. The political elite will continue to bluster and procrastinate, prevaricate and pontificate, and, eventually, come to some form of compromise that suits their own vested interests rather than bothering about what the electorate may want or have voted for. Any meaningful resolution of the Brexit conundrum will be further frustrated by the internal machinations of the European Union which now enters its own period of effective paralysis and inaction as the members jostle and connive in pursuit of assorted coalition arrangements over the coming months and look to decide who will take over the posts currently held by the likes of Juncker, Tusk and assorted others.
The country remains fairly evenly split over the vexed question of Brexit. A second referendum will resolve nothing - if Leave wins narrowly again, the Remainers will still call for the UK to remain tied to the EU's apron strings, while if Remain wins, Leave will call "FOUL" and demand a third referendum to resolve the 'draw'. A general election will also resolve nothing and may well put the hard left Marxists of Jeremy Corbyn's party in control.
Where do we go from her ? I wish I knew.
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