Brexit Metaphor No 166
In one of the sequels to the Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas tells a story about the illegitimate son of Cardinal Richelieu. A jolly young lad of around 20, Richelieu Junior pays visits to the child king Louis XIV from time to time. One day Richelieu Junior arrives at the palace and finds the boy king upset over something. In frustration, little Louis has just embarked on breaking his large collection of glass menagerie toys. Young Richelieu does not ask for the reason - instead he joins the boy king and helps him break every single glass toy he has.
Fast forward some 400 years to Brexit times and the story repeats itself - but with different characters. Jeremy Corbyn is young Richelieu and Boris Johnson is little Louis XIV (the Sun King), busy with destroying Britain's economic fortunes with Brexit. Instead of arguing against Brexit, Corbyn arrives at the scene and joins Johnson in pushing through Brexit and finishing off Britain's departure from the EU.
If only someone else had been Labour leader in 2016 - perhaps Keir Starmer - the outcome of the 2016-2020 Brexit drama could have been different. And perhaps at least some of the glass menagerie would have survived Brexit. Alas, history is full of counterfactuals.
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| Louis XIV as a child, by an unknown painter (image source: Wikipedia) |
P.S. The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, also features a glass unicorn with a broken horn - just like the one on the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom (post-Brexit).
