Brexit Metaphor No 51
Boris Johnson, in his almighty wisdom and flowery language, declared on the BBC today that the UK can renegotiate with the EU and have the Irish backstop removed from the Withdrawal Agreement. Hence the following flowery metaphor:
The EU Single Market and the Customs Union resemble the still life paintings below in respect of the time they all took to come to life:
1) Jan van Huysum (left) needed more than a year to paint these flowers because he could only paint each flower accurately when it was in bloom, and the different flowers blossomed in different seasons.
2) Claude Monet (right) found painting the vase of wild mallows very difficult, so he kept the canvas in his studio for 40 years, re-worked it continuously, and only finished it at the end of his life.
3) The Customs Union took 11 years to complete (1957-1968) and required some groundbreaking rulings by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), e.g. the 1963 Van Gend en Loos v The Netherlands.
4) The Single Market took 46 years to launch (1957-1993), though the preparatory work started in earnest with the "mutual recognition" principle enshrined by the 1979 ECJ case Cassis de Dijon.
Now back to Boris Johnson (affectionately known as BoJo): His fantasy expectations that the EU would unbundle the Single Market or the Customs Union to make an exception for Britain are as unlikely to materialise as a painter like Claude Monet would have been likely to take the scissors and cut a flower out of his vase canvas after 40 years of working on it.
The Single Market, just like Rome, was not built in a day, so no amount of curve balls or curvy bananas that BoJo may throw at it would sway the EU. Yet, BoJo likes to think that he moves in mysterious ways and has yet more wonders to perform.
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| Flower paintings by Jan van Huysum (left) and Claude Monet (right), Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, Dec 2018 |
Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 110 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.
And just like those paintings, art and inspiration were required to create the European system we have now. Brexiters lack those.
ReplyDeleteDaisy pickers, as the Irish might say!
ReplyDelete