Here’s What The Dodgy Brexit Analogies Used By Politicians This Morning Actually Mean

This morning a collection of very dodgy analogies, metaphors and similes were used to describe the difficulties of Brexit on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme. The Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, has, in particular, been criticised for his clumsy and insensitive use of language.

Metaphors and similes are very useful. As Lakoff and Johnson wrote in their book Metaphors We Live By, 'metaphor is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects'. In essence, a metaphor can be a way of describing something invisible, intangible or otherwise difficult to visualise. The invisible experience of anxiety, for instance, could be described as the feeling of plummeting down a lift shaft on a loop. The inchoate but universal force of love is often conveyed as a journey or compared to food, it nourishes us.

Brexit, as we know all too well at this point, is not only difficult to describe but near impossible to understand. It is a political force, changing almost every day. And yet, the impact it is having on us is enormous.

Is it any wonder, then, that experts and politicians are resorting to increasingly suspect imagery as they try and get their points across?

So, who said what and what did they mean? The Debrief has collected and decoded all of this Brexit lyricism so you don't have to:

Leaving the single market is 'like swapping a three-course meal for a packet of crisps'

Sir Martin Donnelly, former permanent secretary at the International Trade Department aka head of Liam Fox's international trade department, deserves all the credit for this. He was comparing the trade deal Britain currently has with the European Union to a 'three-course meal' because of 'the depth and intensity of our trade relationship across the European Union'. He argued that if we do go ahead and leave the single market and customs union (which is what his old boss Fox thinks we should do), we risk cutting ourselves off from one of our biggest export markets.

So where do the crisps come in? Donnelley questioned why you would forgo a three-course meal that you already have in favour of 'a packet of crisps in the future' which alludes to the fact that we just don't know what sort of deal Britain will get if we exit both the single market and the customs union as part of Brexit.

It's not a perfect analogy by any means, but it certainly helps to visualise and quantify the scale of the decision our politicians currently face.

Interestingly, yesterday Jeremy Corbyn announced that Labour are in favour of remaining in the customs union and will seek 'a new, comprehensive UK-EU customs union'.

A Border Between Northern Ireland And the Republic of Ireland Could be 'Just Like The Border Between The London Boroughs Of Islington, Camden And Westminster'

This controversial comparison belongs to none other than Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and he has come under intense criticism for making it. In essence, Johnson is implying that the drawing up of a dividing line between EU-member state Ireland and Brexit-Britain's Northern Ireland is just like implementing the congestion charge in London.

Speaking to Today's Mishal Husain, Johnson said 'there's no border between Islington or Camden and Westminster, there's no border between Camden and Westminster, but when I was mayor of London we anaesthetically and invisibly took hundreds of millions of pounds from the accounts of people travelling between those two boroughs without any need for border checks whatever'.

Husain was quick to question whether this was an appropriate comparison for Johnson to be making. The question of how a border would work between The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit is a serious one that nobody really seems to know how to address. Before to Good Friday Agreement was signed, there was much violence centered around military checkpoints which were located at the then border. Their removal was a turning point in the peace process which followed the Troubles.

As a result, the reasoning for Johnson's decision to compare the more or less non-existent border between two London councils and two sovereign states has been lost on, well, pretty much everyone.

As far as language goes, you might argue this was an attempt on his part to minimize the very serious problem of a potential Ireland/Northern Ireland border post-Brexit.

You Can't Suck And Blow At Once

This, too, is the work of Boris Johnson and it's a phrase you probably never wanted to hear him utter. But, what was he on about?

Of course, you can't technically 'suck and blow' at the same time and we wouldn't recommend trying it. Johnson used this questionable metaphor as a way of explaining why he thinks Britain has to leave the customs union.

As you might expect, Boris does not agree with Corbyn's backing of a new customs union because, as he sees it, it would leave Britain 'a colony' of the European Union in a situation that would give us 'the worst of both worlds'.

He would perhaps have been better served by the phrase 'you can't have your cake and eat it' but instead he said, 'You can't suck and blow at once, as they say, we're going to have to come out of the customs union in order to be able to do free trade deals.'

Johnson finished things up by saying 'one day we will be sitting here not talking about Brexit and it will be fantastic'. There are surely many people who share these sentiments but, nonetheless, there's a rather a lot to be sorted out before that day comes around. For now, whether he likes it or not, it's literally his job to talk about it.

Follow Vicky on Twitter @Victoria_Spratt

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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.