BREXIT Party wins. The chances are you will have heard that phrase once or twice by now. “Landslide”, “romped it”, “stormed to victory” – they’ve all been bandied about to describe the Brexit Party’s showing as the single biggest party in the European election. It’s the sort of language that evokes Tony Blair in 1997, casting Nigel Farage as the man of the moment, articulating all our hopes and aspirations.

It’s all nonsense, of course. Apart from being a very Anglocentric view (no such success here in Scotland for the Brexit Party), it woefully misrepresents what happened. For a start, this isn’t a General Election; no one “wins”. The turnout was roughly half of what you’d expect in a General Election or referendum. But even if it were a Westminster ballot, Nigel Farage has won well short of half the seats on offer. What the result actually exposes is that Mr Farage represents a distinct minority view.

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In fact, far more striking than the Brexit Party’s showing is the meteoric rise of the firmly pro-Remain parties. Where Mr Farage’s vote under the Brexit Party banner only added five per cent to his vote share in 2014 when he led Ukip, the Liberal Democrats, Greens, Change UK, the SNP and Plaid Cymru grabbed an extra 22.4 per cent of the vote compared to 2014.

Take the net wider and compare the votes of all the pro-Leave versus all the pro-Remain parties (assuming that at least some of Labour’s votes are pro-Remain) and this election indicates, not that Britain wants Brexit, but that it is split roughly in two between Leave and Remain, as it has been ever since 2016.

Mr Farage’s greatest achievement has arguably been to ensure that Remainers are now as fired up about the issue of Europe as Leavers have been for decades.

So with another hung election on the crucial issue of the day, what now for Brexit? A General Election in the autumn is starting to look more likely.

This European election has put the two main UK parties through the centrifuge and flung them away from the centre ground of compromise. Labour looks more likely by the minute to declare decisively in favour of a confirmatory referendum, the shadow chancellor John McDonnell tweeting his apparent support before breakfast was over yesterday.

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Meanwhile, the wildly Eurosceptic Tory party membership are set to elect a Brexit zealot, with the Tory leadership hopefuls already trying to outdo each other in their fanaticism. Embarrassingly, everyone from Dominic Raab to Jeremy Hunt is claiming, Trump-style, to have what it takes to renegotiate a new, better deal with the EU. Fat chance. The overwhelming likelihood is that the new PM will be unable to make Brussels budge, and, having boxed themselves in with their own jingoistic rhetoric, will be left steering the UK towards the cliff edge.

What a travesty that would be. UK voters were sold the idea in 2016 that Britain would negotiate a favourable cake-and-eat-it deal (a dishonest prospectus in itself). No one said anything about crashing out. If we are facing ejection from the EU at Halloween, fury will erupt among a majority of voters, businesses and MPs, building pressure for Parliament to pass a vote of no confidence in the new Prime Minister, leading to a General Election.

Would enough Tories be prepared to turn on their new leader like that, forcing an election in which their own party could face a drubbing? It would depend on how far-sighted moderate Tory MPs turned out to be. Enthusiasm for a no-deal Brexit among a certain constituency of right-wing voters has been like a collective delusion, and that delusion is driving the direction of Tory policy, but in the event that no deal actually happened – damaging exports, jobs, healthcare provision, public spending and house prices – then just imagine how fast the tide would turn. And who would get the blame? Quite. And they know it. Just witness how Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson changed their tune in favour of Mrs May’s deal back in March when they realised that they might otherwise have to carry the can for crashing out.

Might someone like Mr Johnson, for whom this fight has always been more about ambition than ideological commitment, try to avoid electoral oblivion and personal ignominy by pulling a fast one, calling a second referendum in place of an election? Perhaps. A decisive reckoning with the electorate seems increasingly unavoidable for Labour and the Tories, even if neither want it.

For them, it must feel like being stuck in an anxiety dream. But other parties like the LibDems are in good heart following Sunday’s result, daring to dream that the country’s willingness to take a punt on them might have been more than a passing protest vote, a one-night stand before voters return to their increasingly loveless marriage with Labour and the Tories; they dream that this might be a sign of politics changing for good.

For the buoyant SNP, the big question is, what does this result say about voters’ attitude towards independence? Is it softening? The party’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford claims the result shores up the case for a second independence referendum, but the share of the vote for pro-UK parties was comfortably ahead of pro-independence parties, and the Tories held their single seat, losing far less of their vote share than the English Conservatives did.

Handfuls of salt are required. This was a vote about Brexit, and on the night, the strongest message from Scottish voters was reserved for Labour. Its vote collapsed after leader Richard Leonard backed Brexit during the campaign instead of a confirmatory referendum. Mr Leonard could now help redeem himself by coming out ahead of Mr Corbyn unambiguously in support of that second EU referendum, but don’t hold your breath.

He should take the risk. This election doesn’t just show that Scotland would like very much indeed to stay in the EU, but that millions of UK voters would too, and that they are not in the mood to compromise. And it shows something else too – that, while there is no settled will on Brexit, remaining would please many more people than a hard Brexit, no matter how much Nigel Farage might wish it were otherwise.