Only a foolhardy Conservative could fail to learn from these devastating election results
SIR – The rise of the Brexit Party, and its success in the European elections, should send a clear message to the undemocratic Tory Remainers.
They must accept the referendum result and get behind a leadership candidate who both supported the 2016 vote and believes in Brexit. Peter Lewis
Rayleigh, Essex
SIR – It is not a wake-up call or a fire alarm going off when the Conservatives’ share of the vote falls to 8.8 per cent. It means the house has already burnt to the ground. Dr John Doherty
Stratford-upon-avon, Warwickshire
SIR – The election result demonstrates that voters prefer parties with a clear message to the divided Tories and the equivocal Labour Party.
That is why the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats have done so well. If the new Tory leader tries to find a compromise in Parliament, they will fail. There must be a clearly stated policy that we will leave the EU at the end of October, with or without a deal. David Kidd
Petersfield, Hampshire
SIR – As a result of the bloody noses delivered by the Brexit Party, one can only hope that the self-serving bunch in Parliament will, this time, listen to the electorate’s message.
Regrettably, history suggests that it will simply be business as usual, as politicians consider the electorate “too thick to understand the issues”. Brian Curd
St Ives, Dorset
SIR – Faced with election results showing the Brexit Party topping the polls nationally, and in some areas achieving a higher vote share than Labour and all the other pro-remain parties combined, Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, bizarrely claimed on the BBC that Labour should become more pro-remain – even though that was the reason it got thrashed in its former heartlands of Wales and the North East.
Her attitude betrays how Labour’s metropolitan leadership has been blinded by its London-centricity and regards those of us outside the M25 with disdain. Steven R Harvey
Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire
SIR – Watching the election coverage, I noticed that many representatives of the Remainer parties were keen to point out that, when the total number votes for the Brexit Party were compared with the number of votes for all the Remainer parties, more people had voted in favour of remaining. How nice that, three years after the referendum, they suddenly believe that the total number of votes counts. Geoff Smith
Gretna, Dumfriesshire
SIR – Anna Soubry claimed that Change UK’S results were “extremely good” and a “great base for the future”.
Presumably she used the same analytical technique to arrive at her judgment that it would be best not to honour the result of the referendum. Mike Kaye
Lincoln
SIR – Surely the most significant statistic from the European elections was that less than half of the British electorate bothered to vote. David Tomlinson
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk SIR – Context is all. The Brexit Party has won less than one third of the vote on a turnout of around 37 per cent, which means that only about 11 per cent of the electorate want what Nigel Farage calls a “WTO Brexit”.
This is not enough to justify taking the country down that route, and Parliament needs to understand the result properly. Graham Burnett
Sarn, Montgomeryshire
SIR – We must be cautious in interpreting the results.
Each “group” has its list of candidates and they are elected according to how many seats the group wins. In our area, the firstnamed on the Tory list was Daniel Hannan, who has been our MEP for years and does an excellent job. I wanted to vote for the Brexit Party, but more than that I wanted Mr Hannan to remain my MEP, so I voted Tory. Brian Foster
Shrivenham, Oxfordshire
SIR – Why isn’t Nigel Farage receiving more credit for giving voters a choice in the European elections? Has anybody considered what the result might have been without the Brexit Party on the ballot paper? Michael Legg Reigate, Surrey
SIR – These elections were about a single issue. They do not indicate that Nigel Farage is on his way to No 10 – nor should Sir Vince Cable think his party is on its way back.
Once we are out of the EU, politics will return to normal. Certain MPS will, hopefully, lose their seats for showing their disdain for the will of the people, but in the main the two large parties will survive. Bill Winward
Calne, Wiltshire