Europeans haven’t given up hope that Britain will change its mind on Brexit

LONDON – France’s most public intellectual sank into a bathtub, while fully clothed in a bespoke suit, onstage in a one-night-only theatrical production to make a plea for Britain to reconsider its decision to leave the European Union.

“Please, please remain,” Bernard-henri Lévy begged the audience at Cadogan Hall in Chelsea, a posh London neighborhood, where the silver-maned provocateur was greeted with rapturous applause.

“This damn Brexit, if they go through with it, will be a win for the hard right over the soft right. For the radical left over the liberal left!” Lévy was just getting started.

“All over the U.K. it will be the revenge of fusty Britain over the Britain that is open and in touch with its glorious past. It will be the consecration, in London, of Trump and Putin. Of drunken hooligans and illiterate bullheaded neonationalists,” he said.

Two years after the British Prime Minister THERESA MAY leaves 10 Downing Street, on May 2, in London, England, United Kingdom.

British decided to leave the union, as Prime Minister Theresa May struggles to forge a deal that her squabbling cabinet, skeptical Parliament and Brussels might all approve, there remains a sliver of hope – or, perhaps, a delusion – among some anglophilic Europeans that Britain might yet still be persuaded to forget this nasty Brexit business and stay put.

There is the slimmest chance Brexit might be put to a second referendum vote and that a deal might be voted down.

Polls in Britain show a few-point shift against Brexit since June 2016. Members of Parliament are also agitating to have an up-or-down vote on May’s final Brexit scheme. There is great passion for this. On Tuesday, Phillip Lee, a Tory justice minister who voted against Brexit in the referendum, surprised many when he resigned from the government to speak out against May’s plan to leave the bloc. He was adamant that lawmakers get a vote the final plan.