Northern Ireland and the European Parliament elections are straitjackets on Brexit

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 158 

Boris Johnson once said that the EU had put a suicide vest on Britain and was holding the detonator. This is definitely not the case but his metaphor got quite some traction in the media.

Ironically, the UK itself has put two straightjackets on the Brexit process: one geographical, one temporal.

1. The status of Northern Ireland and the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are the geographical straitjacket on Brexit. It pretty much ties Britain into some form of Customs Union with the EU and attaches Northern Ireland to the regulatory regime of the EU Single Market (except in a no-deal Brexit).

2. The European Parliament elections on May 23-26 are the time-limiting straitjacket on Brexit: the date of Brexit could have been postponed multiple times if there were no EP elections coming up in May. The EU maintains that every state has to hold elections for MEPs, which would be anathema to Brexiting Britain. Hence May 22 becomes the natural cutoff date for Brexit to take place.

This does not leave Britain too many options for Brexit: the country can either turn into a political and economic "couch potato" (an inactive participant) with a no-deal Brexit; or it can vote through Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement and be a "straitjacket potato".

Straitjacket (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 158 have been posted so far and three more Brexit Metaphors will 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.
3. Invitation: If you'd like to contribute to the debate, please leave a comment below or re-tweet the blogpost link.
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5. Thank you for being here!

May's Brexit plan is riddled with bullet holes like British WW2 plane, yet key plan is still missing

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 118. 

Theresa May's 10th defeat in Parliament over Brexit on February 14 shows there was no love lost between her and her MPs on Valentine's Day. Her Brexit plans keep coming back riddled with votes against her like British RAF fighter planes coming back from missions in World War Two riddled with bullet holes from German anti-aircraft fire. Her fundamental mistake is that she is trying to fix the bullet holes, which are not essential. Instead, she should be tackling the life-or-death matter.

One of the most fundamental moments in the science of statistics comes from one such episode in World War Two, when the RAF decided to armour up its planes to better protect them from enemy fire. The instinctive decision was to count the bullet holes in different parts of planes returning from mission and reinforce the areas that got hit most often. However, this was an obvious but wrong decision, as mathematician Abraham Wald higlighted at the time. If a plane came back safely, the number of bullet holes did not matter as holes in areas such as the wings indicated non-essential damage. What really mattered were the areas that did not contain bullet holes on surviving planes (the engines and the propellers), as the planes that got hit in exactly those areas would not have survived at all and would not have returned to base to be included in the study sample.

Theresa May should similarly ask herself what Brexit deals she has not managed to bring back to Parliament, rather than trying to armour up the damaged areas of the deal that she has brought back. A deal containing a second EU referendum (People's Vote) or a negotiated Customs Union would be the essential missing planes in her fleet returning from the Continent.

RAF Avro Lancaster plane from WW2 (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 118 have been posted so far and another 43 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.
3. Invitation: If you'd like to contribute to the debate, please leave a comment below or re-tweet the blogpost link.
4. Sign-up: I would be thrilled if you signed up to receive my blog daily by entering your email address in the blank in the top right-hand corner of this page.
5. Thank you for being here!

UK wants to re-bake the perfectly formed EU cake into a muffin

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 116. 

Britain has a soft spot for cakes: The Great British Bake Off is a popular BBC reality show; "cakes and ale" is a synonym for the pleasures of life; and "a piece of cake" is the easiest of things.

So since 2016 the UK has decided not only to have its cake and eat it, but also to re-bake the EU cake and squash it into a muffin. The only problem is that the EU cake has been baked over 60 years and the syrup, cream and icing are already in place: the Single Market with its Four Freedoms, the Customs Union and Schengen seem to be working more or less in sync. So taking a perfectly formed cake and putting it again in the oven would not be such a good idea, let alone deforming it to make a muffin out of it (or Brexiteers might even want a Yorkshire pudding).

The EU has suggested multiple times that the UK should simply take its piece of the cake and leave the rest. Yet, Britain is still hoping that the EU will allow for the EU cake to be mangled by the Brexiteer politicans as they fancy. 

Hope and cake might both seem to spring eternal but Britain's spring will be shortlived, ending on March 29 (Brexit day). And it looks likely that there may not be any cake at all, so ale and whisky will have to substitute.

Cake (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 116 have been posted so far and another 45 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.
3. Invitation: If you'd like to contribute to the debate, please leave a comment below or re-tweet the blogpost link.
4. Sign-up: I would be thrilled if you signed up to receive my blog daily by entering your email address in the blank in the top right-hand corner of this page.
5. Thank you for being here!

Britain in a Customs Union with the EU is like a lodger who has no control of the heating

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 110. 

Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party are calling for Britain to enter into a permanent Customs Union with the EU after Brexit. Being in a Customs Union with a bigger entity that sets all the rules is like being a lodger in a house with a live-in landlord. In such a set-up, the landlord has exclusive control of the heating while the lodger would have no say on when to the heating should be on.

The rules of the Customs Union for Britain and the EU will start out the same, as at present. However, over time when changes need to be made, these changes will reflect the interests of the EU member states and not those of Britain. The changes may sometimes even be to the detriment of the UK. Britain may thus end up in a situation where it is the lodger who has a radiator in the room but the landlord takes down the valve every day and only brings the valve to turn on the heating when it suits them. The EU did warn, though, that upon leaving the EU Britain would stop being a rule-maker and would become a rule-taker.

I wonder if any Brexiteer would call this "taking back control". Yet, it is still better to be a lodger than not to have a roof over your head at all.

Radiator (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 110 have been posted so far and another 51 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.
3. Invitation: If you'd like to contribute to the debate, please leave a comment below or re-tweet the blogpost link.
4. Sign-up: I would be thrilled if you signed up to receive my blog daily by entering your email address in the blank in the top right-hand corner of this page.
5. Thank you for being here!

Britain is installing steps to the EU now; and wheelchair access in 5-10 years

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 99. 

There is a principle in architecture: "never build one step; build zero or three." If you face a small difference in levels, smooth it out without a step. Or if the difference is big, use at least three steps. If you built just one step, people would not notice it and would stumble and fall all the time.

Britain's Brexit process seems to be the implementation of this architectural principle; we just don't know yet if it will be implemented correctly. Britain's relationship with the EU before 2016 was characterised by a marked difference in the level of commitment to the European project but both sides "agreed to disagree" and managed to smooth out their differences without building steps. The 2016 referendum, however, advised the British Government to build steps between the UK and the EU. The referendum never specified how many steps would need to be built; it just spat out an (advisory) instruction: "Leave! Build steps!"

The Luxembourg Prime-Minister Xavier Bettel laid out eloquently in 2018 the British penchant for sitting on the fence: “They were in with a load of opt-outs. Now they are out and want a load of opt-ins.” Theresa May is trying to "leave" by buiding two steps between Britain and the EU (OUT of the EU institutions and OUT of the Single Market), while Jeremy Corbyn is (unrealistically) calling for only one step (OUT of the EU institutions but remaining in a customs union with the EU). It will be interesting to see how many steps Britain will end up with, given the historical annoyance of the EU with the 2.5 steps that Switzerland has ended up with (i.e. some access to the Single Market).

Ironically, in 5-10 years, a wheelchair ramp with no steps will most likely be installed between Britain and the EU to smooth over the bigger difference in levels. However, in the meantime prepare for some hopping up and down the steps of different regulatory regimes - just like hopscotch but for adults.

Two steps, in violation of the architecture principle (Killarney, Ireland, Jan 2019)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 99 have been posted so far and another 62 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.
3. Invitation: If you'd like to contribute to the debate, please leave a comment below or re-tweet the blogpost link.
4. Sign-up: I would be thrilled if you signed up to receive my blog daily by entering your email address in the blank in the top right-hand corner of this page.
5. Thank you for being here!

33 months in EU "departureship" pale in comparison with UK's 12-times longer EU membership

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 92. 

Have you noticed that disembarking a plane is always faster than boarding a plane? And packing to check out from your hotel room is always faster than packing at home for the same trip? It seems so much easier to take everything which is yours and sweep the hotel room clean than deciding what to bring from home and what to leave behind. Yet, one should not underestimate the time needed to vacate a hotel room or a plane. 

Britain spent 402 months as a (committed) EU member state from January 1973 until June 2016, and is scheduled to spend 33 months in the process of leaving, from June 2016 until the end of March 2019, i.e. a difference by a factor of 12. Building up a sui-generis supranational organisation does take time, but leaving it turns out not to be an easy job either - at least not of the calibre of the 12:1 ratio of membership to "departure-ship". Sensible Brexiteers (while still passionately believing that Britain belongs outside the EU) must be secretly wishing that Article 50 gave five years to prepare for proper withdrawal rather than merely two.

Spending 33 months in "departureship" is turning out insufficient to actually depart the mothership at all. Wouldn't it have been easier to disembark if the luggage on the plane was kept on open racks (as in the 1970s photo below), rather than in closed overhead luggage bins as it is nowadays. If the EU had been simply a Customs Union, unravelling membership would have been easy. However, the EU has become a lot more compartmentalised since the 1970s and the acquis communautaire now contains 35 chapters (compartments), all of which have to be "cleared" before a new relationship between the UK and the EU can be forged.

Boarding a plane in the 1970s (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 92 have been posted so far and another 69 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.
3. Invitation: If you'd like to contribute to the debate, please leave a comment below or re-tweet the blogpost link.
4. Sign-up: I would be thrilled if you signed up to receive my blog daily by entering your email address in the blank in the top right-hand corner of this page.
5. Thank you for being here!

The Single Market was not built in a day for BoJo to unbundle

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 51

Boris Johnson, in his almighty wisdom and flowery language, declared on the BBC today that the UK can renegotiate with the EU and have the Irish backstop removed from the Withdrawal Agreement. Hence the following flowery metaphor:

The EU Single Market and the Customs Union resemble the still life paintings below in respect of the time they all took to come to life:
1) Jan van Huysum (left) needed more than a year to paint these flowers because he could only paint each flower accurately when it was in bloom, and the different flowers blossomed in different seasons.
2) Claude Monet (right) found painting the vase of wild mallows very difficult, so he kept the canvas in his studio for 40 years, re-worked it continuously, and only finished it at the end of his life.
3) The Customs Union took 11 years to complete (1957-1968) and required some groundbreaking rulings by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), e.g. the 1963 Van Gend en Loos v The Netherlands.
4) The Single Market took 46 years to launch (1957-1993), though the preparatory work started in earnest with the "mutual recognition" principle enshrined by the 1979 ECJ case Cassis de Dijon.

Now back to Boris Johnson (affectionately known as BoJo): His fantasy expectations that the EU would unbundle the Single Market or the Customs Union to make an exception for Britain are as unlikely to materialise as a painter like Claude Monet would have been likely to take the scissors and cut a flower out of his vase canvas after 40 years of working on it.

The Single Market, just like Rome, was not built in a day, so no amount of curve balls or curvy bananas that BoJo may throw at it would sway the EU. Yet, BoJo likes to think that he moves in mysterious ways and has yet more wonders to perform.

Flower paintings by Jan van Huysum (left) and Claude Monet (right), Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, Dec 2018

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 110 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.

Britain's EU Withdrawal Agreement at least has a price tag. Alternatives don't.

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 44

Theresa May's much maligned Withdrawal Agreement with the EU comes with a price tag, 39 billion pounds. This is the discounted bulk price for a package of commitments by the UK, but not too many commitments by the EU given that the future economic relationship is yet to be negotiated. Yet, at least the UK has been given a dinner menu with prices and knows the total bill for the dishes it has ordered.

Brexiteers and Labour leaders alike (including Jeremy Corbyn himself) have been going around the country calling for a renegotiation. Their purported aim is to get the EU to serve Britain more dishes (including free trade with the EU but not requiring the UK to join the EU Customs Union) and all this for a lower total bill. 

Is there a problem with this? Only one: they are ordering from an imaginary menu where each dish is priced at whatever you are willing to pay. 

Doesn't this sounds like early-stage communism? Or is Jeremy Corbyn just picking up random ideas from Venezuela and other basket cases with make-believe economic models?

Dinner menu, no prices (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 117 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.

Brexit is an eye-opener: metaphorical and physical

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor 33

The last 2.5 years since the June 2016 Brexit referendum have been a metaphorical eye-opener on the complexity and significance of Britain's relationship with the EU. The next 4 months until Brexit day (March 29, 2019) can turn out to be a physical eye-opener.

On the metaphorical bit: who knew that Britain would be so willing to convert the much maligned 23,000 EU codes and regulations into British law in their entirety? Or that Britain would be so desperate to maintain access to the Single Market? Or that Britain would be so afraid of falling out of the tariff wall of the Customs Union?

On the physical bit: the next 4 months will show whether Britain will indeed stick a metal tool in its eye to prove... I am not sure what.

Hopefully the metaphorical eye-opener has opened the eyes of sufficient numbers of citizens and politicians to tip the balance in a debate polarised by fake news. For the rest, there is an apt movie title: Eyes Wide Shut.

Bottle opener (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 128 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.

Can Hard Brexit waterfall be made navigable with 5 sets of locks?

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 27

Hard Brexit is as abrupt as the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi river. Britain's negotiations with the EU and Theresa May's Brexit Agreement this week are trying to make the Brexit falls navigable by building a series of navigation locks for businesses and people to continue sailing smoothly. These five locks are:

Lock 1: Two years for negotiation since triggering Article 50 in March 2017.
Lock 2: Transition period agreed for March 2019 to Dec 2020, during which nothing changes in practice.
Locks 3 and 4: Option for extending the Transition period or Backstop Option which maintains a UK-wide Customs Union with the EU to avoid a physical border in Ireland.
Lock 5: Future Free Trade Area (FTA) between the UK and the EU, to be negotiated after March 2019.

Provided these sets of locks survive the coming political turmoil in Britain, there is one question that remains unanswered:

Is the British ship on the Zambezi heading:
A) downstream towards the Indian Ocean?
OR
B) upstream towards the Kalahari Desert?

Theresa May in Parliament, Nov 15, 2018

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 134 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.

Indefinite "Leave" to "Remain": another name for Soft Brexit fudge

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 24

Britain voted "Leave" in the 2016 referendum and is scheduled to leave the EU on March 29, 2019. The British prime minister, however, is trying to negotiate a Soft Brexit deal under which Britain will remain in the EU Customs Union and possibly in the EU Single Market. The duration of this continuing membership is subject to debate but may well end up being indefinite. So, ironically, "taking back control" will mean that Britain is losing its voting seat at the table, while at the same time trying to keep things running as they are, not to disrupt its economy. From the UK's perspective this compromise solution (commonly known as fudge) sounds like an "indefinite Leave to Remain". While from the EU perspective, given that every member state is wielding a veto on a futre UK-EU trade agreement, the EU position is "leave me if you can".

Leave & Remain vote percentages in 2016 EU referendum (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a #BrexitMetaphors daily series, with 137 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.

Stairs that go up also come down. So does Brexit.

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphors No 20

Stairs that can take you up should also normally be able to bring you down. That's common sense. But the guide in a guided tour of Wentworth Woodhouse (northern England) told me that he had been accused of misinformation by a tourist who fell down a flight of stairs. Apparently the guide did warn the group that the tour involved going up a lot of stairs but he did not tell them that they would also have to come back down.

Brexit is a similar story. There may be benefits from Brexit (depending on who you are and what industry you work in) but it is obvious that Brexit will entail significant disadvantages and cause damage to the economy and society. Yet, even though I am assuming that it is obvious, it may not be obvious to everybody, for example to the tourist who fell down the stairs at Wentworth Woodhouse.

And then there are cases (as in the Escher work below) where you simply cannot tell if the stairs are going up or down. When Estonia joined the EU in 2004 it had to switch from zero customs tariffs to the protective tariffs of the EU Customs Union. While some Brexiteers are calling for the opposite: that the UK should leave EU Customs Union and abolish all tariffs.

Is free trade good or bad? Is Brexit good or bad? It all depends on where you stand in the image below and at what angle you are holding your head. Yet, you need to have a head in the first place.

Relativity by M. C. Escher (Source: Wikipedia)

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This article is part of a daily series, with 141 more Brexit Metaphors to follow until Brexit day, March 29, 2019.
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Disclosure: the author has a master's degree in European Integration.

Brexit is as fractal as Russian dolls

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 19

Russian dolls are a fractal hierarchy: the biggest doll contains a smaller one, the smaller doll contains a tiny one, etc. Many other things in nature are fractal: snowflakes, coastlines, even broccoli.

Brexit resembles Russian dolls in such a fractal sense. Article 50 sets out the rules for leaving the EU, but Article 50 itself can be stopped with a tacit "Article 50" of sorts: with the agreement of the other EU member states.

Similarly, the draft backstop Customs Union agreement that is supposed to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will likely contain its own backstop: the rules on how the UK can withdraw from the backstop Customs Union with the EU.

There was a referendum for Brexit in 2016 and now there may be a referendum to stop Brexit. That's as fractal as Yin & Yang gets. So why don't we just brexit from Brexit?

The world is fractal. So is Brexit politics: darkness in light, light in darkness.

Fractals: Mandelbrot set (Source: Wikipedia)

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(This article is part of a daily series, with 142 more Brexit Metaphors to follow until Brexit day, March 29, 2019.)

Post-Brexit trade negotiations: When chased by a bear, don't be the slowest one

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 15

When you are being chased by a bear, you don't need to run faster than the bear; you only need to run faster than the slowest member of your group. At least that's what experienced girl and boy scouts will tell you. Sadly, this advice comes too late for Brexiting Britain, which voluntarily agreed to become the slowest among all EU member states: for the last two years and for the foreseeable future.

The world of international trade is not a peaceful sunlit meadow of flowers and bees; it is a dark forest where the big bears are chasing the slower animals: where global trading powers are constantly and ruthlessly jostling for influence and wealth.

Organisations and societies have formal hierarchies and informal pecking orders. Britain used to be at the top of the totem pole in the EU, despite what Brexiteers might tell you. But any future trade deal that Britain may negotiate with the EU can be vetoed by even the smallest EU country: Malta, Luxembourg or Cyprus.

Being outside the EU's protective tent exposes Britain to multiple bears from across the world: from trading giants like the US, China, Japan and Russia, to mini bears like New Zealand or Chile, which are all demanding their pound of flesh in the renegotiation of WTO quotas.

Is there a solution for the UK? Maybe get back into the EU tent and stay in the EU Customs Union after all.

Brown bear (Source: Wikipedia)

 
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(This article is part of a daily series, with 146 more Brexit Metaphors to follow until Brexit day, March 29, 2019.)