'EU heeft een groter probleem dan een Brexit'

Brexit would change the chemistry of the union, leaving Germany in a hegemonic role it does not want, and leaving France in a very awkward "menage a deux". It would deprive the smaller free-market states of their policy champion and risk a chain reaction. A looser trading sphere might all too quickly emerge as a more alluring prospect along the Nordic-Protestant rim. Eurosceptics won the vote in Denmark, just as they did in Britain.

It is a fair bet that EU leaders would search for an amicable formula, letting Britain go its own way while remaining a semi-detached or merely titular member of the EU. Let us call it the Holy Roman Empire solution.

Yet Britain is the least of their problems. The much greater shock is the "Séisme" in France, as Le Figaro calls it, where Marine Le Pen's Front National swept 73 electoral departments, while President Francois Hollande's socialists were reduced to two.