The Conservatives’ arrogance and incompetence won’t be missed, and the next UK government will have to rebuild trust

• Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

After a disastrous decade in which they blew up Britain’s relationship with the rest of Europe, shrank trade and made life miserable for cross-Channel travellers, the Tories can’t leave office soon enough for most continental Europeans.

“Good riddance!” is the cry from Lisbon to Helsinki as London’s erstwhile European partners hope that a new Labour government will start to rebuild relations with the neighbours that have suffered the most severe damage since the end of the second world war.

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

Far-right gains have left liberals and Greens reeling – but despite differences, their interest lies in banding together

For Europe’s centre-left, it was the night from hell. Liberals and Greens took a beating in many countries and lost dozens of seats as nationalist and Eurosceptic parties grabbed nearly a quarter of the seats in the European parliament. The centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) slipped just below their existing total thanks to unexpectedly strong scores in Italy and Spain.

Worse still, France, the EU’s pivotal power, saw the biggest far-right gains. That prompted President Emmanuel Macron to call a high-risk snap election that could clear the way for Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally to sweep into government within a month.

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

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Emmanuel Macron calls a snap election and the hard right wins big in Germany – but that’s far from the whole picture

In Germany, the further rise of the far right was expected – every poll had predicted as much. What was not expected, however, was that revelations of alleged corruption and involvement of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) with the Russian and Chinese governments would apparently matter so little to its voters. Though the resulting gains – the AfD jumped to 16% from 11% in 2019 – were overall more modest than looked probable in the spring, across east Germany the far right came out ahead of all other parties.

Mariam Lau is a political commentator for Die Zeit