EU elections analysis: It's Brexit, stupid

The vote became a proxy second referendum, with the Tories and Labour spectacularly rejected in favour of those with a clear stance on the most important issue of the day.

The Brexit Party were the biggest success story, absorbing Ukip support and going further, eventually winning over 30 per cent of the vote and 29 seats across the country.

The Remain-backing parties can also claim victory, with the Liberal Democrats coming in second and the Greens fourth, collectively taking over 30 per cent of the vote and returning a combined 22 MEPS to Brussels.

In Yorkshire, the Brexit party’s victory was even more pronounced at 36 per cent, with the newly-formed movement winning three of the region’s 6 seats and wiping Ukip and the Tories off the slate entirely.

With hours of exhaustive analysis and commentary already behind us and many more to come each political faction will undoubtedly claim that the outcome reinforces their existing views.

But taking the main parties out of the equation, the result across the country suggests that voters are more or less evenly split on whether to pursue Nigel Farage’s no-deal Brexit or a People’s Vote.

In short, the Leave and Remain camps of 2016 have become more entrenched polarised as each side reaches for a more extreme position.

Far from breaking the Brexit the deadlock, the result instead shows that the impasse that has gripped Westminster has also taken hold of the electorate.

No wonder Theresa May begged her successor to “embrace compromise” as she announced her resignation last week.

But if there’s one thing that this election shows, it’s that the political middle ground where compromise might have been achieved has, for now, been lost.