Some days it can be hard to believe, but Brexit hasn’t actually happened yet. Until 11pm on 29 March 2019, when we leave the EU without a deal, enter into the transition period envisaged by Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, or don’t leave at all because the article 50 period has been extended, the fight over our future remains a battle of ideas.

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Such battles are won largely with words: in the absence of facts on the ground, we are swayed by assertions, characterisations and attempts to define – sorry Theresa – often rather nebulous concepts.

Politicians have always spun their own plans to emphasise the advantages, and their opponents’ to emphasise the flaws. This is normal. You can call the same thing a “community charge” or a “poll tax”, an “under-occupancy penalty” or a “bedroom tax”. Communicating complex and multifaceted policies to ordinary people requires a shorthand. A lot rides on getting your preferred label to stick in the public imagination before your rivals can hijack the process. Making the nice bits seem nicer and the bad better can be a way to win.

Brexit has turbocharged this process. Not only are the stakes high, but they are increasing. The task of separating our legal and economic system from the EU after 45 years of alignment is the most complex ever attempted by a British government. For non-experts, shorthands are virtually the only way in. As a result, their importance has grown out of all proportion to what they can effectively communicate. A sort of rhetorical bubble has developed.

With political discourse in this hallucinogenic phase, the gap between metaphor and reality is beginning to yawn. Among the latest examples is the idea of a “clean break” Brexit. In an editorial on 15 December, the Sun used the phrase to welcome the prospect of leaving without any kind of withdrawal agreement. A week later it returned to the theme, suggesting “we are better off negotiating … after a clean break, with our £39bn and our leverage intact”. At the same time, the polling company YouGov asked respondents if they believed that “Anything less than a clean break from the EU will be a betrayal of the referendum vote”. Nationally, 48% agreed, and 35% disagreed. On New Year’s Day, Mick Hume, editor-at-large of Spiked, wrote that “a No Deal, clean-break Brexit is the only available option which comes close to fulfilling the demand of 17.4 million Leave voters”.

“Clean break” is a familiar idiom: a ready-made shorthand. According to the Macmillan Dictionary, it means “a sudden complete end to something such as a relationship or a period of time spent in a place”. The example sentence is as follows: After the divorce, I decided to make a clean break and moved to a new town. This is metaphorical, of course. Concretely, a clean break refers to a physical rupture – of a bone, or piece of wood or stone – that leaves behind no fragments or jagged edges.

And it’s easy to see the appeal of the metaphor. It suggests a new start, unencumbered by the problems of the past. The opposite of a “messy break-up”. But can it be appropriately transferred to Brexit? It should be pretty clear that we aren’t ending the period of time we’ve been spending off the coast of France. So the geographical usage is out. The Sun, and people sympathetic to its position, must instead be thinking of relationships. But here’s the thing: it will not be possible for the UK to end all contact with the EU. European countries will still be our economic, diplomatic and cultural partners. Our populations are intertwined. There is no way to delete Europe’s number and unfriend it on Facebook. The relationship will certainly continue; what will change is the conduct of it, which will probably become more contested and bureaucratic outside the purpose-built structures of the EU.

For these reasons, the same problems apply to other relationship shorthands, as former European Commission staffer Mark English pointed out to me on Twitter: “Indeed, ‘divorce’ was always an imperfect metaphor for leaving EU. Geography/economy/geopolitics mean UK can’t quit the European house and start a new life. It risks ending up stuck in a bedroom while the rest of the family are at the table.”

There are those who would argue that if leavers can’t have “clean break”, then remainers aren’t allowed “crash out” either. Neither correspond precisely to reality, and both serve political ends. But no one’s talking about banning metaphors, which would make natural communication pretty much impossible. What we need to do instead is gauge the width of the reality gap, and apply scepticism accordingly. “Crashing out”, which brings to mind a sudden, potentially violent ejection, might be a reasonable way to characterise the overnight disruption to trade, travel and many other things besides that leaving without a deal would involve. Most people’s lives won’t be hugely disrupted, and the shocks would gradually be absorbed – but it will be pretty bumpy.

A “clean break”, though? Nothing about the above sounds clean. And when the dust settles, we won’t be far out in the Atlantic, but as close to – and dependent on – our European neighbours as ever. This is not a run-of-the-mill metaphor: it’s a clever lie. Polls such as YouGov’s cannot be used to assess support for a no-deal exit, since the pollsters have not presented anything like the reality for people to consider.

As 29 March approaches, words matter more than perhaps any time in modern British history. Choose yours carefully.

• David Shariatmadari is an editor and writer for the Guardian in London. His book Don’t Believe a Word: the Surprising Truth About Language is out in August 2019



