You Brits are known for many cool things, and high among them are the Rolling Stones. It's likely that more of us in Europe can recite the band's lyrics than can remember the sonnets of Shakespeare. Who hasn't heard Mick Jagger's abrasive voice reminding them that “You can't always get what you want”?
Here's an update, a soundtrack for the age of Brexit: You definitely can't get one thing and also its opposite. Yes, we indulged you while you were part of the European Union. We gave you your rebate. We allowed you to sit on the sidelines of Schengen and the euro. But those days are over, now that you've decided to go.
It's time for you to stop acting like a spoiled child and accept that you can't have everything both ways — departure from the EU but membership in programs like Galileo and Erasmus; an Irish borderthat's both closed but somehow open; access to the single market without its most important conditions; the freedom of movement and no oversight by the European Court of Justice; your pick of the European cherry tree, without bothering to water the soil or tend to its branches.
So please, eat your Brexit cake and go. But keep your sticky fingers off our slice of the pie. Or better yet, stiffen your famous upper lip and admit you made a huge mistake. Own up to the fact that British public opinion was instrumentalized; that the Murdoch press doesn't represent the interest of the country's citizens; that there's no £350 million a week to spend on the National Health Service; that the Brexit referendum is more reflective of the misuse of private data by Cambridge Analytica than the will of the people.
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