Photo-illustration by Ivo Oliveira/POLITICO (Source images by Getty Images) Political Linguistics A brief history of having cake and eating it How an old expression became one of the key phrases of Brexit.

Cake is a recurring theme of Brexit, chiefly thanks to Boris Johnson claiming that the U.K. could "have our cake and eat it" as it leaves the European Union. He's also given the phrase a slight twist, saying, "My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it."

Cake is very much a national obsession for Brits. Last year's announcement that the hugely popular TV show "The Great British Bake Off" was moving from the BBC to Channel 4 (that's three clicks on the remote) dominated the news agenda for days. The show returned last week and was basically the same but with adverts, prompting a collective sigh of relief.

When Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson nailed her colors to the Remain mast in the run-up to the Brexit vote last year, she described the U.K. as “a cake-filled misery-laden gray old island.”

Foreign Secretary Johnson was roundly mocked for his have-cake-and-eat-it claim. Speaking to business leaders in Berlin in June, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond quoted former German leader Ludwig Erhard, who said, "compromise is the art of dividing a cake in a such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece."

Hammond added that these were "wise words with some applicability to the Brexit negotiations, although I try to discourage talk of cake amongst my colleagues."

Bank of England chief Mark Carney weighed in by saying: "Before long, we will all begin to find out the extent to which Brexit is a gentle stroll along a smooth path to a land of cake and consumption."

That is, however, exactly what many Brits want: to pick the bits of EU membership that they like and discard the things that they aren't keen on.

The phrase that Johnson used, as the linguistic historian Ben Zimmer wrote in the New York Times Magazine, makes more sense when you reverse the construction, so it goes: "You can’t eat your cake and have it, too."

That makes the meaning clearer: Once you eat your cake, you have no cake left. The point is that sometimes you have to make a choice between two options that cannot be reconciled.

Many other nations have their own variety of the phrase. In Russian, it's “You can’t sit on two chairs,” and in German, “You can’t dance at two weddings.”

More colorful are "You cannot please both the goat and the cabbage," as used by the French and Romanians; and the Italians' marvelous "Volere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca" — "to want the barrel full and the wife drunk."

It's also a phrase with a long history.

The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs quotes a 1546 compendium by John Heywood that says, “Wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?” and it pops up in Jonathan Swift's 1738 satire "Polite Conversation" when the character Lady Answerall says "she cannot eat her cake and have her cake."

Cherry cake, anyone?

The standard response from the EU and the leaders of its member countries is to warn Britain that a "have cake, eat cake" scenario isn't going to happen. They tend to prefer the phrase "cherry-picking" (the Germans say Rosinenpicken — “raisin picking” — but the sentiment is the same), with the occasional "no Europe à la carte" thrown in for good measure.

That is, however, exactly what many Brits want: to pick the bits of EU membership that they like (free trade, cheap mobile phone calls) and discard the things that they aren't keen on (foreigners, chiefly).

A report earlier this year from the National Centre for Social Research found that Leave and Remain voters have similar views on the kind of Brexit they would like.

“For the most part, Remain and Leave voters are not at loggerheads on the kind of Brexit they would like to see,” John Curtice, the author of the report and the éminence grise of British pollsters, said in his notes accompanying the findings.

“Many Remain voters would like to see an end to the less popular parts of Britain’s current membership of the EU, while many Leave voters would like to retain the seemingly more desirable parts."

It's not just the British public taking such a view. The words "have cake and eat it" were written on a Brexit memo carried out of No. 10 Downing Street by a government aide and snapped by an eagle-eyed photographer (the same document also contained the words "very French negotiating team").

In response, Xavier Bettel, the prime minister of Luxembourg, said of the Brits: “They want to have their cake, eat it, and get a smile from the baker."