Brexit Metaphor 34
Britain's privileged and beneficial relationship with the EU is about to be downgraded to a more ordinary smal-country-to-big-country relationship. Think Ukraine to Russia in the worst case, but without the prospect of war. This is like downgrading a premium food like edamame beans to its basic ingredient: soya beans.
Edamame is served in expensive restaurants, while soya is fed to pigs as animal feed. Essentially, these are the same thing, except that green soya (which is poisonous to humans in unprocessed form) needs to be blanched briefly to turn it into soft and delicious edamame beans.
Britain has decided it is unwilling to put up with the minimal processing that turns soya into edamame, i.e. with the procedures and responsibilities of EU membership that make a country a member of the Single Market and the Customs Union. So it is cutting off its nose to spite its face and shooting itself in the foot. Let's hope that, once the switch to soya is completed, the face and the foot will not turn into a pig's face and a pig's foot.
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| Edamame beans (Source: Wikipedia) |
Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 127 more Brexit Metaphors to follow until Brexit day, March 29, 2019.
2. Disclosure: The author has a master's degree in European Integration.
3. Invitation: If you'd like to contribute to the debate, you are welcome to leave a comment below.
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