Brexit is like driving in the middle of the road on Red traffic lights

By George ILIEV
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.

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.
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!

Scraping mould off jam can mean scrapping Brexit

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 123. 

Scraping mould off jam appears to be one of Theresa May's few hobbies. If the jam is the EU (which has been providing sugar and fruit for the British economy for over 40 years) and the mould is Brexit (which has been festering for 2.5 years now), then surely scraping the mould equals stopping Brexit.

What do you do with a mouldy cake then? Eat it or have it, it is mouldy anyway. So perhaps give it to Boris Johnson to have and to hold until Brexit us do part.

Mouldy 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 123 have been posted so far and another 38 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!

After Cakeism, Britain now faces a round of Proseccoism

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 74

A lot of prosecco is drunk in Britain on New Year's Eve. So Boris Johnson must have been right: the Italians will want to continue selling their prosecco to Britain even after Brexit. Given the undisputed nature of this fact, it can mean only one thing: that the EU wants a free trade deal with Britain just as badly as Britain wants a deal with the EU. 

However, the problem in this argument is that it oversimplifies the situation. Einstein had something to say on this topics: 

"everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler!” 

Britain's exports to the EU equal around 12% of the country's GDP, while EU-27 exports to Britain total only 3% of the GDP of the EU-27. So despite what Boris says, Britain will be impacted four times more strongly by potential trade disruptions caused by Hard Brexit than the impact the EU may suffer.

In 2018 Boris gave the world a new word: "cakeisim", i.e. "have your cake and eat it." In 2019 his contribution to civilisation can be marked by the following new word:

Proseccoism: a cocktail of egocentrism and oversimplification

After all, what is wrong with putting yourself first and expecting that the world will rotate around you?

Prosecco (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 74 have been posted so far and another 87 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, 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!

Getting off the fence is harder than sitting on it

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 72

The British are known as good diplomats. Part of being diplomatic is the skill and willingness to "sit on the fence", which Boris Johnson calls "eating your cake and having it", i.e. having it both ways.

Britain has been sitting "on the fence" of Europe for decades, if not centuries: one leg in, one leg out. The 2016 referendum, however, gave the UK government marching orders to take Britain off the fence and out of the EU. Yet, it is turning out surprisingly difficult for the UK to come down from its comfortable perch on the fence. 

Will Britain manage to get down without tearing its pants? And if Brexit does tear Britain's pants, would the same people still shout "Brexit is naked. Long live Brexit!"

Fence (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 72 have been posted so far and another 89 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, 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 gifts of the Brexit Magi: Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 66

Three wise men brought gifts for Brexit. 

1. Nigel Farage brought democracy, for he learned democracy at the European Parliament which gave him a platform in 1999. He has been serving democracy as an MEP in the European Parliament ever since.

2. Boris Johnson brought the prospect of free trade deals, the promise of 350 million pounds a week, and some cake. He thought he could do with cake what Jesus did with the five loaves of bread and the two fish. Sadly, the cake only lasted as long as no one had eaten it. Boris was tired and hungry on the way, so he ate the cake.

3. Jacob Rees-Mogg brought the 18th century, for he was "the honourable member for the 18th century." 

The British people were all delighted.

The three wise men (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 66 have been posted so far and another 95 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, 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!

Brexit advice: When you burn your bridges, don't run out of runway and burn yourself

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 61

Successful entrepreneurs apply a strategy called "burn your bridges": ensure that there is no turning back. This means you should stop doing anything else and should focus exclusively on your startup. 

There are two underlying reasons for this strategy: time and commitment. 
1) Time: burning your bridges, e.g. by quitting your day job, allows you to focus and allocate the time to work through all the iterations necessary to bring the startup to success. 
2) Commitment: if you don't burn your bridges, when the going gets tough you may be tempted to go back to your day job and abandon the startup unreasonably early.

Britain's enthusiasm to start new free trade agreements with faraway non-EU countries is commendable. Asia is the place where, on current trends, most of the growth will take place in the 21st century. So a strategy that focuses on Asia can be seen as Britain's "burn your bridges" approach: create a sense of urgency and look at the future, never looking back at the past.

However, entrepreneurs also have to take into consideration another factor called "runway", i.e. how long you can finance your startup's survival until it starts generating revenue or until you can raise more capital by selling equity. New projects usually require at least 6-12 months of runway.

Some Brexiteers are keen to deploy Hard Brexit and "burn Britain's bridges" with Europe. The problem is Britain's runway is severely limited: the country will run out of runway almost immediately if it crashes out of the EU without an agreement. So the UK may face a situation where it has burnt its bridges but in the process has set its own castle on fire.

Could Britain develop a strategic focus on Asia without burning its bridges with Europe? Couldn't "cakeism" (have your cake and eat it) be applied to trade with both Europe and Asia simultaneously? And if the UK had to choose, should it choose the bird in the sky rather than the bird in the hand?

Is there a different conclusion to this episode of the Brexit drama? Can anyone think of a justification for burning your bridges if you will run out of runway straight away and will burn yourself in the process.

So here is a final word of warning: when you burn your bridges, be careful not to burn your breeches, lest you end up a sans-culottes.

Tower Bridge, London (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 100 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.

Love, Marriage & Divorce: Britain's complex relationship with the EU

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 39

"Love them but don't marry them" has been Norway's approach to the EU for more than 40 years. Norway is a member of the EU Single Market and the Schengen zone, but not of the EU itself and of the EU Customs Union. This arrangement seems to be working for Norway just fine.

On the other hand, Brexit Britain is trying to learn to live by the mantra: "Divorce them but still love them."
Can you spot a logical fallacy here or shall we continue to eat cake and have cake... at Mr Bean's wedding?

Mr Bean's Wedding (Source: Wikia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 122 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.