So much for Europe’s swing to the right. In Britain, the Conservatives were not just thrown out, but subjected to the worst beating in the 190 years of their existence, winning 121 seats to Labour’s 411. In France, contrary to expectations, the snap parliamentary elections were won by the extreme Left, who took 188 seats, followed by Emmanuel Macron’s Centrists with 161, pushing Marine Le Pen’s hard-right Rassemblement National into third place with 142.

Were commentators wrong to hail a rightward shift in the aftermath of last month’s European elections? Not necessarily. The factors that generally push voters in a conservative direction are still there: mass migration, inflation, and, not least, a major war in Europe.

In both France and Britain, the headline tallies paint a misleading picture. Although Le Pen came third in terms of seats, she led the popular vote, winning 37% to the Left’s 27% and the Centre’s 22%. France’s two-stage ballot is designed to encourage tactical voting, and even after 80 years, the taint of Vichy still lingers, convincing most centrist voters to back anyone but a Le Pen.

In the U.K., the first-past-the-post voting system produced the most lopsided House of Commons in democratic history. The parties of the Left (Labour and the Greens) got 11.5 million votes between them and 416 MPs. The parties of the Right (the Conservatives plus Reform, the British MAGA party) got 10.9 million votes and 126 MPs. A win for the Left, it is true, but hardly as emphatic as it seems at first glance.

What I think we are seeing, not just in Europe but across the West, is the confluence of three major political shifts. First, yes, there is a general rightward shuffle as voters harden their attitudes in the face of tougher domestic and international circumstances. Second, there is the anti-incumbency mood that has persisted ever since the bills came in for the lockdown.

In country after country, voters seem determined not to recognize the costs of a policy which, in most cases, they themselves demanded. The tax rises, the borrowing, the inflation, the fall in educational standards, the deferred health crises, the hit to productivity — these things were an inescapable consequence of paying people to stay at home for much of 2020 and 2021. But a curious amnesia has descended on voters. Or perhaps it is simply a very human desire to blame their misfortunes on their politicians rather than on themselves for having demanded, in most cases, even stricter prohibitions than they got.

Two leaders were sly enough to call elections at the height of the crisis, when voters still backed harsh restrictions. Canada’s Justin Trudeau and New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern were duly reelected. But, once the hangover set in, a very different mood took hold, and few sitting governments were able to convince their electorates that they were now repaying debts accumulated in the months after March 2020. Certainly not the British Tories.

The third factor is the most consequential. Put simply, voters’ attention spans are shrinking. This is the first time Labour has run Britain in the age of smartphones. In the 14 years since that party’s last period of office, people have become more demanding, more short-tempered, and more prone to conspiracy theories. Any government failure is attributed to malice or to some hidden hand. The idea that there might not be enough money rarely gets a look-in.

Obviously this tendency tends to help the political extremes, who offer simple answers. The French Left promises to solve everything by taxing the rich, the French Right by deporting foreigners. But Centrists can also turn it to their advantage. The British Liberal Democrats went from 11 to 72 MPs by campaigning on the single issue of sewage in rivers.

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In vain did candidates from other parties seek to explain that every country in Europe allows for occasional sewage overflows at times of heavy rain, that this happens less in Britain than in most places, that it is gradually being phased out, and that to rebuild the system so that it never happens at all would cost the same as another lockdown. Voters are in no mood for nuance or explanation. “Why can’t you just sort it out?”

What will be the impact on our democratic culture? Our TikTok age makes us simultaneously more demanding of our politicians and less interested in the trade-offs they must make. We run through governments as if scrolling on our screens, never satisfied, always grumpy. This surely won’t end well.