The European elections show the people are just as divided as parliament – the only way out of Brexit deadlock is a new referendum

Constructing a majority for any one of the three main options – soft Brexit, hard Brexit or no Brexit – does not seem possible through conventional politics

The winners of the European elections were the Remain alliance – which is what Chuka Umunna, of the new Change UK party, once tried to call the five parties committed to keeping Britain in the EU.

Between them, the Liberal Democrats, Greens, Scottish National Party, Change UK and Plaid Cymru won 40 per cent of the vote.

The runner-up was Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. If the votes for Ukip, his previous party, are added, the total support for parties advocating a no-deal Brexit was 35 per cent.

In third place, the two main parties that have dominated politics for the past century, with a total of just 23 per cent for a confusion of policies on Europe lying somewhere between the two poles of cancelling Brexit altogether and leaving without agreement.

The British people, therefore, are just as divided as their elected representatives. Constructing a majority for any one of the three main options – soft Brexit, hard Brexit or no Brexit – does not seem possible through conventional politics. That is why The Independent believes the nation will be driven towards a new referendum in the end.

It is the only way the people, and therefore their parliament, can be forced to choose an option that has been defined in advance and that can be implemented straight away. This would not be a repeat of the 2016 vote, which offered a choice between one specified option, Remain, and one unspecified one, Leave.

We believe that the argument has changed. There are now MPs who want to leave the EU who argue that a second referendum is inevitable. Huw Merriman, a Conservative MP who is an aide to the chancellor, told BBC Sunday Politics South East at the weekend: “There is no majority for anything, which means we can either carry on in this vein or be realistic and say we’re going to have to put this back to the people to make a decision. I’d back Leave in that situation, and I don’t like it at all, but I’m just being realistic.”

It is hard to be sure what the Labour Party’s position on Brexit is at any given moment, but it does seem to be moving in that direction too. Jeremy Corbyn’s comments for the cameras often sound like someone trying to remember a complicated script that has been drafted by a committee of warring factions.

Today, for example, he ended up saying on TV: “We will call for a general election and a referendum.” This may have been a garbled version of the written statement issued in his name on Sunday night, in which he said: “This issue will have to go back to the people, whether through a general election or a public vote.”

This will not satisfy Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, who criticised Mr Corbyn’s policy on Sunday night, saying the party should have advocated a referendum on the government’s exit deal, in which it would campaign for Remain.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, tried to strike a new balance today, which seemed to shift Labour policy significantly towards a referendum, which he described on TV as “inevitable”.

One reason Mr Corbyn’s inner court may be reluctant to advocate a referendum is that they would then be asked what the question would be and what would be Labour’s preferred answer. Mr Corbyn suggested he would be consulting his party about this before its annual conference in September. He needs to move quicker than that, because then a new prime minister will be hurtling towards the Brexit deadline of the end of October.

Mr Corbyn has started to move in the right direction, but he needs to endorse a new referendum unequivocally and soon.