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.

Seen from Brussels, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw, the Conservative party will for ever bear the mark of Cain for having trashed the UK’s membership of the EU through a mixture of negligence, arrogance and incompetence. David Cameron’s monumental miscalculation in calling an unnecessary referendum he was certain he would win caused a crisis of confidence across Europe and shunted Britain on to a siding of relative economic decline and diminished global influence.

European governments watched with dismay tinged with a little Schadenfreude as the Westminster political system descended into chaos, with five prime ministers and revolving-door, feuding Tory governments between 2016 and 2023, putting severe strain on the unity of the UK and spooking financial markets.

While Rishi Sunak has at least stopped digging the hole and steadied ties, notably by negotiating the Windsor protocol on trade arrangements for Northern Ireland, only a government without the toxic Tories can begin to rebuild trust by putting practical cooperation ahead of sovereigntist ideology.

The return of Nigel Farage, who did more than anyone to spook Cameron into promising the disastrous referendum, as a parliamentary candidate and leader of Reform UK on a mission to outflank........

© The Guardian