Brexit Metaphor No 111.
The EU is viewed in Britain just as UN peacekeepers are viewed in some conflict zones: people on both sides of the divide think the peacekeepers are against them. In Britain the left think the EU is a neoliberal capitalist structure, while the right think the EU is a socialist construct. The truth is the EU is right in the middle: balancing between 28 governments that span the whole political spectrum.
I was on a plane after the 2016 EU referendum and a retired Conservative pro-Brexit couple sat next to me, returning from a cruise. They tried to convince me that the Financial Times was a left-wing newspaper because it was a pro-EU newspaper. I couldn't bring myself to continue the conversation after they made this revelation.
This phenomenon has deep roots in game theory: it was first described in 1929 and given the name Hotelling's Law. It is also known as the ice cream sellers problem. If you have two ice cream sellers on a beach, the rational strategy for each of them would be to put their stand right in the middle of the beach in order to maximise their market access to the entire beach. As an unintended consequence, the two sellers end up back-to-back with each other. This is the reason why liquor stores, furniture shops or fast food joints often cluster together in a single street.
The EU does not want to alienate governments of any colour, so it sits in the middle of the political spectrum and in the middle of the economic policy spectrum. But when the going gets tough, it also sits in the middle of the blame game.
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| Ice cream vendor (Source: Wikipedia) |
Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 111 have been posted so far and another 50 Brexit Metaphors will be published every day until the planned Brexit date of March 29, 2019.
2. Disclosure: The author has a master's degree in European Integration. He also thinks he knows a bit about business, economics, entrepreneurship, China, history, geography, nature, science and Rubik Cubes.
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