The Great American Interchange and the Great European Shortchange

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 160   

Until three million years ago, North America (including Mexico and Central America) was separate from South America and there was an ocean in the middle. Then around three million yeas ago the Isthmus of Panama rose up from the sea floor and created a land bridge linking the two continents: a phenomenon known as the Great American Interchange.  After that the New World was never the same again. Many northern species, including jaguars, pumas, llamas and a tonne of other animals invaded the South and thrived. But only three South American species moved north and spread out in any large numbers (the armadillo, the opossum and the porcupine). The reason for this discrepancy was that northern animals had had millions of years to evolve and acclimatise to tropical conditions in Mexico and Central America, which had served as a nursery for their southern expansion. On the other hand, southern animals had only lived in the tropics so the northern plains and mountains were not a possible habitat for them.

The creation of the EU is a similar story of competition among economic and social species: a Great European Interchange. The Common Market served as a training ground for the global expansion of the most competitive European companies: Airbus, German carmakers, a few pharmaceutical firms and the banks and funds of the City of London. These companies became the jaguars and the pumas of the corporate world. On the other hand, freedom of movement exposed to trans-continental competition European blue-collar workers who hadn't acclimatised to globalisation. These workers, just like the South American species, became the losers from the Great European Interchange. Their sidelining ultimately led to Brexit and to the other (lesser) anti-EU social movements on the continent, as the EU for them felt more like "a Great European Shortchange." In Britain former prime minister Gordon Brown set up a shortlived Migration Impact Fund at the end of his rule in an attempt to mitigate the consequences of globalisation for manufacturing workers. Unfortunately, this fund was closed by the next British prime minister, David Cameron, who took over from 2010. Cameron didn't see the writing on the wall until it was too late - which cost him losing the ill-fated EU referendum in 2016.

There was one key difference between the Great American Interchange and the Great European Shortchange. Three million years ago, the different species in the Americas could only vote with their feet. In present-day Europe, all people can vote in elections and referendums, so leaving behind a large segment of the population feeling shortchanged was never going to be a successful recipe for cohesive political and economic development.

The Great American Interchange (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 160 have been posted so far and one more Brexit Metaphor remains to be published until the originally 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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