LONDON -- The "no" vote that seems to have blown apart the whole European project is a crisis of the elites and institutions of Europe, not of the people. In fact, if the jubilant faces of many French people on Monday was a true signal, it might be taken as a triumph for the citizens against those elites, rather than against the European Union: Enough, stop taking us for granted, if it's to be our Europe, stop locking yourselves away in secret summits buttressed by large expense accounts and fancy dinners and old world protocols. Consult us, engage with us, make it our Europe.
But that's almost as much an illusion as the fear that the new, expanded EU will now crumble. Because there is no single body of European citizens, united with a single common view about what sort of body they want the EU to be.
Every European country has its body of naysayers -- those who think their own nation can do better without the entanglements of EU laws and institutions, and who perceive the diminution of national sovereignty entailed in EU membership as a mortal blow to national survival. This view is perhaps stronger in Britain than anywhere else for historical reasons. Some of these have to do with empire, some to do with American links, some to do with being an island on the edge of continental Europe.