Dover. Coastal town in the county of Kent, keeper of white cliffs, host to the ferries that shuttle us across to Europe and the chosen destination of Banksy’s latest brilliant piece of street art.
Over the weekend a huge mural appeared on the side of a building not far from the Dover ferry port. In it, one of the stars on the EU flag is being chiselled away by a workman in white overalls on a ladder. A pretty slap-in-the-face level clear piece of imagery right there, really. So long, EU. Brexit wasn’t a bad dream and yep, we’re indeed in the process of rather fragmentarily chiselling ourselves away from the rest of Europe. You know, ICYMI.
Banksy's mural is quite reminiscent of the memes that dominated everyone’s social media feeds in the weeks after the referendum, really. But if you look closely enough it’s actually a whole lot deeper than that ‘I wanna be inside EU’ one.
Let’s set some context. Breezing over the confusing political shit storm that has been the last year or so, we’re now on the other side of the French election, the results of which will indeed have an impact on how the whole Brexit thing goes by the way. We’re also in the run up to a super important general election which is as much, if not more, about how Brexit will happen and in what form as it is about Teresa May eating chips for the camera. We’re balls deep in the Brexit bullshit and Banksy’s mural is a big fat reminder of what a tantalisingly long process this is going to be, both while we're in the process of leaving and after we eventually do.
If you look a little closer at the mural, as so kindly highlighted in a close up Banksy posted on his Instagram, you’ll see that not only is the part-way destroyed star of the UK crumbling away, there are also loads of fracture lines branching from where the workman has been hacking away, out towards the rest of the flag.
What might this mean? Well, 'the cracks are starting to show' is a straight forward and pretty accurate analogy to throw in here (Theresa May's fall out over in Brussels last week comes to mind). But also, maybe the fact that leaving the EU isn’t just going mean one less star on the flag and a clean cut Britain-shaped hole in the map of Europe. If there’s one thing I learned from those Autoglass repair adverts on the telly, it's that chips and cracks spread you guys, and then that can end up causing damage you didn’t see coming. Next thing you know your whole windshield is falling off (maybe). The other stars might not even need to be chiselled off by a man in white overalls, they’ll just fall away once the cracks from the removal of the first star reach them. Or something like that....
Flawed and speculative political forecasting aside though, it's safe to say that anyone hopping off the ferry from Calais probably won't be able to take more than a couple of steps into the UK before being hit with a massive Banksy style reminder that Brexit is a thing that we let happen.
Image courtesy of Banksy
Like this? You might also be interested in…
Follow Jazmin on Instagram @JazKopotsha
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.