Brexit Metaphor No 124.
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, a Brexit Curtain has descended across the continent. Not Churchill's "Iron Curtain"; a Brexit Curtain!
The Brexit Curtain is not only a British phenomenon, from Newcastle to Wales and from Lincoln to Cornwall. It is a pan-European theme - but it can be more or less diffuse in different member states.
The problem of Europe is it is actually two Europes. They are the same Europe on the surface, but they are different relative to where you stand as an observer, just like the two EU flags on the photo below. If you are on the right, you look left and you see a leftist Europe. If you are on the left, you look right and you see a rightist Europe. "The grass is always greener on the other side" and unfortunately "the sky is the limit" in making such comparisons.
I called this the "punchbag effect" in December and I called it the "sitting in the middle problem" in February. But it is not only a blame game; it is a matter of perception at every level. Because Europe is so diverse, if you want to see the EU as bureaucratic, imperialist, ultra-capitalist, liberal elitist, socialist or whatever else, you would find some fodder for any such thoughts. But if you were to apply the key EU principle of proportionality and assessed the relative weight of these phenomena, you would find that few such arguments hold up against scrutiny.
The Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell declared Churchill a villain in mid-February because he had quelled a Welsh riot in which one miner died in 1910. This was a flagrantly disproportional statement. And so have Brexiteers declared the EU a villain on many even flimsier grounds. Churchill won the war in 1944-45 and the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. Hero or villain, ultimately you decide what to think.
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| Two EU flags near Sloane Square, London, Feb 16, 2019 |
Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 124 have been posted so far and another 37 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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