Europe, says Bernard-Henri Lévy, will collapse if Brexit goes ahead. “It will collapse because when the body is deprived of its brain and its heart, its spirit dies. Britain is not just an additional piece of the European Union, it is the brain.” I never expected to hear a Frenchman say that, certainly not a great French intellectual. But there’s more: “Brexit will be a much bigger catastrophe than most people expect or think, a catastrophe for Britain and a catastrophe for Europe. Europe is unthinkable without Great Britain. Everyone who reflects deeply about Europe knows that the UK is its beating heart.”
Britain the brain and heart of Europe? I thought the French saw us as, at best, an American puppet or, at worst,