To be sure, saving the English realm is all the Brexiteers ever cared about, but what sort of realm has a prime minister who lies to its queen, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did when he suspended the British Parliament last year? However, if he were around today, De Gaulle would point out that Johnson’s Britain has neither Europe nor the open sea. Still, it is painfully clear that Brexit is a defeat for the idea of Europe — that metaphysical chimera, that geopolitical Harlequin’s coat of many colors. Without the UK, Europe will become more stifling. It will have the ruins of Rome, the splendor of Athens and the ghost of Bohemian novelist Franz Kafka.

Source: Taipei Times February 15, 2020 15:56 UTC