King Henry VIII and PM BoJo 500 years later

By George ILIEV

Brexit Metaphor No 169

It’s 5 years today since the 2016 Brexit referendum - since king BoJo cut off Britain from Europe. Well, 500 years ago Henry VIII did the same for personal benefit. So what would be more appropriate to mark the anniversary than the finale of the musical “The Six” (wives of Henry VIII) - live from the West End:

https://youtu.be/GBLa-aNSfc0

“Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.”

Britain is a walnut that grew into a sapling; and then Brexit struck

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 105. 

Once upon a time, there was a walnut that fell from a walnut tree. It had a protective shell so the worms couldn't eat it while it was lying on the ground. Time passed and the walnut germinated, so a thin sapling grew out of it. But then a herd of goats came and ate the sapling. End of story.

Britain is this walnut. It fell to the ground in 1973 when the UK joined the European Economic Community (EEC). This gave it access to a vast internal market so the walnut took root and germinated: in a few years the UK economy started recovering from the monicker "the sick man of Europe". Growth was maintained in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s and the shoot became a young sapling. A storm struck in 2007-2008 (the global financial crisis) but then a rainbow formed in the sky in 2012 (the London Olympics). So everything was starting to look great again until Brexiteers took power in 2016 and tramped on the walnut sapling. They didn't want a walnut to grow in their garden; they wanted to plant an English rose instead. A walnut tree, even though productive, was not welcomed as it cast a shadow, while an English rose would produce a fragrance that would waft halfway around the world.

Walnut (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 105 have been posted so far and another 56 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!

EU is a shark cage, but the sharks are on the outside

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 102. 

Brexiteers are right: the EU is a cage that keeps countries inside it and unable to roam the world's oceans. But why do countries stay inside the cage? Couldn't all of them stage a referendum and leave the EU?

They could, except that they would end up swimming in an ocean full of sharks: USA, China, Russia, India. The EU cage allows the member states inside it to engage with the sharks outside without being eaten. 

Shark cage (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 102 have been posted so far and another 59 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!

Wobbly Singapore-on-Thames chimera loses out to Singapore proper

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 96. 

Global bank HSBC moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to London in 1992 to be immune to potential uncertainty in Hong Kong after Britain's 1997 handover of the city to China. Going the other way, British vacuum maker Dyson now plans to move its headquarters from Britain to Singapore. Dyson claims this is not related to Brexit but is merely an attempt to capitalise on growth in Asia. However, its pro-Brexit founder James Dyson could not have chosen a more sensitive moment to announce this move. 

If growth in Asia is the driving factor behind the HQ move, could Asia also explain many of the curses of globalisation for which Brexiting Britain has been blaming the European Union? Could the EU have served merely as an early harbinger of globalisation, as a continent-wide simulation which has in recent decades been rolled out on a global scale? But then shouldn't the UK Government also offer the British people a referendum on globalisation? It could end up even bigger than the 2016 referendum on the EU. And if it turns out that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is part of the problem for "Leave-Globalisation" voters, what could the solution be when trading on WTO terms turns out to be the "enemy of the people"? ...Maybe urgently finding water on Mars and moving there?

The Singapore-on-Thames vision for London and Britain is increasingly looking like a chimera: a mythical creature with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a snake. On the other hand, Singapore, the lion city, already has a real stone lion on its waterfront (the Merlion, pictured), and this lion is the mascot of the city. 

The fact that a non-existent lion is losing out to an existing one almost sounds like a logical fallacy but it is not. Globalisation moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.

Merlion, the official mascot of Singapore (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 96 have been posted so far and another 65 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!

Fruit keep ripening after being picked; Voters keep learning after being consulted in referendum

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 94. 

When you pick a fruit from the tree, this is a "no turning back" moment: you cannot re-attach the fruit back to the tree. Similarly, when you offer the people of a country a referendum on an issue, it looks like this will be a "no turning back" moment, whatever the outcome.

Yet, some types of fruit (bananas, apples, peaches) keep ripening after they have been detached from the branch. In the same way some people keep learning more about the issue put to referendum for months and years after the vote took place.

Since the 2016 EU referendum, many "Leave" voters who chose to engage with reality and learn more about the EU have changed their mind and would now vote "Remain". Shouldn't they be entitled to be given a voice again, or are they expected to just "go bananas"?

Bananas (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 94 have been posted so far and another 67 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!

Parliament is a garbage processing plant that separates wheat from chaff

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 93. 

In statistics and computer science there is a principle called "garbage in, garbage out" (GIGO): if you input nonsense, you get nonsense as a result. In political science, a referendum produces a good approximation of the GIGO principle: the inputs are noisy (e.g. campaigning on emotive rather than factually-relevant factors) and the outcomes are noisy (with unclear follow-up) as well: "noise in, noise out". The 2016 EU referendum in Britain is the perfect example.

Before your household garbage reaches the landfill, however, there is an intermediate step of collection and processing. Garbage trucks compress the collected garbage to increase transportation capacity while processing plants pick out recyclable materials from the garbage (paper, glass, plastic).

In the democratic process of representative democracy, parliament is the garbage truck and the processing plant. It separates the garbage from the recyclable materials and helps put recyclables to good use. The job of MPs is to work through the noisy and fuzzy data and come up with solutions that bring complexity down to a manageable sequence of rules, policies and actions. This is why representative democracy works much better than direct democracy for complex matters: no one but the professionals have the time to study each issue in its complexity.

It will become clear by the end of January 2019 if the EU wheat can be separated from the Brexit chaff by the British Parliament. Or if another referendum will need to be held.

Garbage truck (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 93 have been posted so far and another 68 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!

Wanna strike a match inside a fuel tank? Be my guest!

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 80

Once there was a man who lit a match to see if a fuel tank was full or empty. He won a Darwin Award.*

Once there was a man who asked a whole country to vote on EU membership. He won a cosy retirement.

Who knew that when you light a match inside a petrol tank, it would explode?

Who knew that when you hold a referendum to ask a simple question on a complex matter, a whole country would implode?

Explosion of fire (Source: Wikipedia)

* Darwin Awards recognise (posthumously) individuals who have killed themselves "in an extraordinarily idiotic manner" and have thus contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool.

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a series of original #BrexitMetaphors published daily. A total of 80 have been posted so far and another 81 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!

Brexit is a cashew nut: a misnamed seed of emotion

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 62

If the apple gave rise to original sin, a cashew apple may have given rise to Brexit: the original sin of British "emotion politics".

Britain does not grow cashews, a tropical fruit from Brazil. Yet, Brexit very much resembles the cashew.

The cashew nut comes from the cashew apple. Botanically the cashew nut is not a real nut but rather a fruit seed, and the cashew apple is not a real apple but rather a drupe (a fleshy fruit with a stone). So there seems to be some disconnect between the description and the facts of biological reality. On the other hand, the disconnect with political and economic reality is visible in the Brexit process: neither is Brexit a solution to Britain's issues, nor is the EU the source of the problem.

The analogy, however, does not stop here. The strangest thing about the cashew nut (seed) is that it grows not inside but outside the fruit. This is why the botanical name of the cashew is Anacardium (Greek for "the heart is out"). And this perfectly describes Brexit: people poured their heart out in the 2016 referendum, as hostility to globalisation and the discontent with the slow recovery from the 2008 financial crisis took their toll in the 2016 referendum. When emotions boiled over and triumphed over the facts, the seed of dissatisfaction emerged from the fruit as a Brexit "nut". 

Is it a surprise then that Brexiteer politicians all look and sound a bit nutty?

Cashew apples and nuts (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 99 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.

How did the Brexiteer seagulls become Hitchcock's "Birds"

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 21

What happens when you ignore the sign "Don't feed the seagulls" and start feeding them? They become vicious and start attacking people. This is exactly what has been going on with the Brexiteers in the last decade.

David Cameron was the person who fed the seagulls (the Brexiteers) on three major occasions:
1. He withdrew his Conservative Party from the European People's Party in the European Parliament in 2009 and thus lost power at EU level.
2. He promised to run a referendum on EU membership if he got re-elected in 2015. He didn't think he would win the UK elections but miraculously won.
3. He scheduled the referendum in June 2016 (in the aftermath of the 2015 Syrian migration crisis), when he needn't have done it until at least 2017.

We have all seen the outcome: the seagulls have become "The Birds" from Alfred Hitchcock's horror movie: vicious and aggressive. What can future generations of British politicians learn from this? Whatever you do, do not feed the seagulls.

"Don't feed the seagulls" warning, Whitby (UK), Nov 9, 2018

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Notes:
1. This article is part of a daily series, with 140 more Brexit Metaphors to follow until Brexit day, March 29, 2019.
2. Disclosure: the author has a master's degree in European Integration.
3. If you'd like to contribute to the debate, please leave a message below.

Three blind men walk into a Brexit referendum

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 5

Three blind men were once asked to describe an elephant. One touched the trunk and said it felt like a snake. One touched a leg and thought it was a a tree. One touched the tail and said it was like a rope.

Three blind men and an elephant (Source: Wikipedia)

46.5 million people were once asked to vote in a Brexit referendum. One saw a poster of Syrian refugees and concluded the EU had a problem with migration. One saw a bus promising to divert £350 million a week from the EU to the NHS and liked the idea. One read an article about the eurozone and decided that the euro was doomed and so was EU competitiveness. One heard from someone at a flea market that Brussels had banned curvy bananas and bristled at the administrative excess of unelected bureaucrats.

Few of those 46.5 million people were blind. But so many of them would still struggle to describe the EU "elephant". And if their descriptions make no sense, should we have them in Zoology textbooks and David Attenborough documentaries?

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(This article is part of a daily series, with 156 more Brexit Metaphors to follow until Brexit day, March 29, 2019.)