It's not just Britain that's angry and divided; so is Europe

It's not just Britain that's angry and divided; so is Europe

Brexit is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake. What a weird week this has been. On trips to the Netherlands and Portugal, where I am now, continental friends hug me as if there has been a tragic death in the family. A longtime Serbian friend says 'now you know what it felt like to be us, explaining that not all Serbs think that way…'

Nothing has changed and everything has changed. I still go through the EU passport-holders queue. But when I stand next to a Scottish family in the airport bus, I find myself thinking: someday soon they might be foreigners, citizens of a small independent country inside the European Union, like Slovakia or Slovenia. But England, my England, where will you be?

Briefly back in London, I'm stopped in Oxford Circus tube station by a complete stranger who says he liked my last Guardian article and he's on his way to a demonstration for Britain to remain in the EU. He just heard about it on Facebook. I follow his lead and catch a glimpse of something almost unheard of in England: a passionate pro-EU demonstration. Finally, when it may already be too late, people have discovered how much they value what the EU has done for them. 'Lithuania, my fatherland, thou art like health,' begins one of the most famous Polish poems. 'How much we should value you, he alone knows, who has lost you'. Substitute the word Europe for Lithuania, and you have the feelings of half of Britain today.

Children and parents shed tears. Family history is revisited as other citizenships are contemplated: French, Polish, Irish. Group emails fly around, charged with dismay, fury at that cynical narcissistic opportunist Boris, and desperate proposals. Can't there be a legal challenge to the referendum result? What about the second referendum for which a petition has collected more than 4 million signatures?

Can't our sovereign parliament block the beginning of Article 50 withdrawal proceedings by a vote? After all, the referendum was won in the name of bringing back parliamentary sovereignty. I can't remember a time when there was so much anger so close to the surface in British life. The Leave vote was itself fuelled by the anger of all those in England and Wales who felt left behind, losing out, ignored.

Now the anger is surging, like an adrenaline rush, through those who voted for Remain. The generation of my sons cries: how dare you rob us of our future?

But if Britain is dismayed, angry and divided, so is the rest of the EU. Broadly speaking, there are two positions among our European partners. A minority position, articulated by Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, French President François Hollande and Belgian prime minister Charles Michel, says in effect 'Goodbye and good riddance. The British people have spoken. The UK should leave as soon as possible and let us move ahead to build Europe around its original Carolingian core.' In Michel's own words: 'Only the Belgian and European interests count for me now – not the British ones. There is no way back.'

At a meeting of the European Council on Foreign Relations in The Hague, I experienced at first hand the anger this neo-Carolingian gambit provoked from many other member states, including most east and north European ones. The former Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb fiercely criticised a meeting of the six founding member states, hastily called as a response to the Brexit vote. Estonia's gloriously outspoken president Toomas Ilves calls Juncker's behaviour 'abominable'. Finland and Estonia belong to the majority of EU member states, led by Angela Merkel, who want to give Britain some time to try to sort this out.

Broadly speaking, they believe that the strategic objective must be to keep as much as possible of the United Kingdom – or will it be the Former United Kingdom (FUK), like the Former Yugoslavia? – as closely associated as possible with the European Union. This is not only because they value what Britain has to offer, from free-market economics to foreign and security policy, but also because they fear the domino effect of a British withdrawal. At the same time, and precisely to avoid that domino effect, they insist that Britain cannot be offered any special favours in the negotiations, for that would encourage Frexiteers like Marine le Pen and Nexiteers like Geert Wilders to try their luck. So: no access to the single market without free movement of people.

Yet their anger is also directed at Britain and, more specifically, at England. The most devastating comment comes from the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, a great Anglophile and erstwhile ally of David Cameron. 'England,' he says, 'has collapsed politically, monetarily, constitutionally and economically'. Ouch. The reproach of disappointed friends is more painful than the Schadenfreude of gloating Belgians.

So what should Bremainers on both sides of the Channel do now? I would counsel against any hasty actions from either side. If we on the Remain side of the British argument had won this referendum, we would expect the Brexiteers to respect the result. We can't just say: we lost, so retrospectively change the rules of the game. (Then England will beat Iceland after all.) There would be a justified outcry. But in time, the negative consequences of this decision will become clear. I suspect even a general election this autumn, to confirm as prime minister the new leader of the Conservative party, would be too soon for buyer's remorse to have worked its way through. Apart from anything else, the new leader that Labour badly needs would scarcely be in place.

So many large pieces of the British-European moving jigsaw are in motion; above all, Scotland. Back in 2014, when Scotland was proposing to secede from the UK and rejoin the EU, Spain feared the encouragement this would give to separatist Catalonia, and European lawyers insisted it must be a new application. But talking to European politicians and experts here, it becomes clear that Scotland seeking to remain in the EU as, in effect, a successor state to the UK, might be treated very differently. Much as I don't want Scotland to separate from England, I don't see why the Scots should be taken out of the EU against their will? And what about Ireland? And re-thinking of the European project across the continent?

No major new alignment can be expected until after the French and German elections next year. By 2018, the likely result of an Article 50 exit negotiation, Scotland's intentions and any changes that may be made on the continent will all be clearer – and a new Labour leader should be firmly in the saddle. That is likely to be a better moment to ask the British people if they really want to commit this act of self-harm. Or maybe the right moment will come a little sooner, or later.

The strategic goal is clear: to keep as much as possible of our disunited kingdom as fully engaged as possible in the affairs of our continent. But sometimes in politics it is wisest to watch and wait, playing for time and keeping your options open. This is such a time.

Timothy Garton Ash is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University