The City of London had the best table in the EU. Post-Brexit it may move to the toilet.

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 45

For London's finance industry, EU membership was like arriving at a restaurant and sitting at the nicest table on a terrace overlooking the ocean, reserved especially for you. But then some guy called David Cameron brings you outside to give you the results of a referendum. And when you return to your table, it has been taken by others and the only table available is in a dark corner in front of the toilet.

Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin and Amsterdam are not yet sitting at the City of London's nice table on the terrace of the restaurant but are inching closer. And the City is not yet being pushed out to the toilet table but is feeling the Brexit uncertainty in a range of areas, from derivatives to euro clearing.

The above scenario is not even the worst. If an orderly departure from the EU will probably move the UK to the table in front of the toilet, a disorderly Hard Brexit will take it straight into the toilet. And there isn't much champagne and strawberries served inside a toilet. Not even a single strawberry, bar the odd memento.

A single strawberry on a toilet, 2018

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 116 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.

A tale of three cities: Singapore-on-Thames, Minsk-on-Trent, Venice-on-Severn

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 3

Brexiteers dream of turning Britain into a deregulated free-trade paradise commonly referred to as "Singapore-on-Thames". Remainers fear isolation and economic decline will convert the UK into "Minsk-on-Trent". The most likely outcome from Brexit is probably somewhere in the middle: I call it "Venice-on-Severn".

Westminster Bridge in 1747, painted by Canaletto (Source: Wikipedia)

Singapore-on-Thames is a pipe dream, given the political traditions of the UK, the recent rise of Corbynism and the size of the country. Minsk-on-Trent is a bugbear: even under Corbyn as a possible future prime minister, the UK is unlikely to slide into authoritarian rule. However, Venice-on-Severn is, sadly, a realistic prospect.

Venice lost its prime position as the trading and banking hub of Europe in the 1500s after the Ottomans cut off access to Middle Eastern trade routes and the resulting Age of Discovery definitively moved trade flows from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Venice did not disappear completely but it was reduced to the status of a "museum of nostalgia" for rich European (and now Chinese) tourists.

The UK is about to give up voluntarily many of its European supply chain networks (including all manufacturing that depends on just-in-time delivery from Europe) and will hand over a chunk of the thriving financial sector of the City of London to European competitors Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Dublin.

However, Paddington Bear, the Loch Ness Monster, the Queen, James Bond and Sherlock Holmes will still be around, in case you are a tourist and started wondering. While Winnie-the-Pooh may finally get his own Doge's Palace.

(158 more daily Brexit Metaphors to follow until Brexit day, March 29, 2019)