Brexit Metaphor No 150
Three years ago, Brexiteers imagined Brexit as a piece of cake and portrayed it in correspondingly "cakey" terms in the media. It sounded great in theory. But there was a minor problem:
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice there is."
The Brexiteers' vision of Brexit did not survive first contact with reality. "The easiest trade deal in history" evaporated into a morass of failed iterations of the Withdrawal Agreement. There was simply no way that the EU was going to give Britain an easy ride. Global trade is a two-lane road but Britain wanted to drive in the middle, wreaking havoc on both sides. The two-way traffic on the road has pretty strict (if not German) rules and both the EU and the rest of the world couldn't quite understand Britain's nonchalance in imagining that it would be left to drive in the middle.
Brexiteers imagine Brexit in a way almost as surreal as traffic lights in China during the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese decided sometime in 1966-1967 that traffic signalling needed to be overhauled and Red would start signifying Go. They only forgot one thing: the meaning of Green was never changed to mean Stop, so utter chaos ensued. Even the red guards had to admit that the old system had worked better and after a few days switched back to normal traffic lights.
Britain has taken 33 months of "Cultural Revolution"-style traffic to come to this point in the traffic circle. Let's hope that red and green will be restored to their original meaning soon.
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| Traffic lights (Source: Wikipedia) |
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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 150 have been posted so far and another 11 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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