It was a strange experience, as a Remainer, to participate in a debate with a pro-European icon and take an opposing position on Brexit. But there I was, in April 2016, two months before the referendum, at a public event at Sciences Po in Paris. Across from me on the platform was Michel Rocard, a liberal socialist who had served as France’s prime minister under François Mitterrand. I argued that Britain leaving the EU would be not just self-harm, but harmful for the bloc, too, depriving it of a member that had played a constructive role in the past and gave it greater geopolitical heft in the present. Rocard countered that, much as he loved Britain as a country, it had long frustrated progress on integration, and the EU would be better off without it.
It is hard to overstate how unusual Rocard’s outspoken position was within the European political mainstream at the time. “Please Don’t Go”, ran the cover of Germany’s Der Spiegel in the week before the referendum. The vote for Brexit was met with dismay on most of the European mainland. In subsequent years, commentary on this side of the Channel has often been couched in terms of mourning. Theresa May’s triggering of Article 50 in March 2017 elicited a “We miss you already!” from both Donald Tusk, the then European Council president, and France’s Libération newspaper (the latter more tongue in cheek than the former). Members of the European Parliament marked their last session before Brexit day in January this year by singing “Auld Lang Syne”. Some had tears in their eyes.
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