The Language of Brexit: Having our Cake and Eating it too

(originally published 8 August 2019)

As the United Kingdom’s deadline for exiting the European Union draws closer (once again), it may be worth reflecting on the strategies used to get people to support policies that go against their own interests. While the use of sophisticated data analytics may have some role to play in the case of Brexit, the depressing truth is that there is also something simpler going on here: namely, old-fashioned political rhetoric.

As is so often the case when we want to understand recent political developments, we can learn a lot about some of the rhetoric deployed in favor of leaving the EU by delving into the work of the English writer George Orwell. While the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four remains Orwell’s most famous, and perhaps most frighteningly relevant, piece, his short essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ – a study of how language has become vague and thus vulnerable to manipulation – is most directly useful to consider in the context of the Brexit campaign.
One of Orwell’s gripes about how the English language is used relates to what he calls ‘dying metaphors’. By these, he means metaphors which have become so over-used that they fail to invoke the same sorts of vivid imagery that they might once have done. Phrases like ‘axe to grind’, ‘grist to the mill’, and ‘swan song’ are all dying in this sense. If we are told that so-and-so has an axe to grind about this or that issue, for example, English speakers are unlikely to think of the person in question literally sharpening a weapon in preparation for bloody revenge. The phrase has become so commonplace that they may simply translate the metaphor into what is literally meant (i.e. that so-and-so has a grievance) without first considering the image presented to get this point across.
As a result of this lack of vividness, Orwell says, dying metaphors may also lead to a loss of attention among the audience. By reverting to these sorts of familiar patterns of speech, the speaker will cause their audience to go into auto-pilot (or ‘a reduced state of consciousness’), not really listening, much less evaluating, what is being said. This, of course, is why politicians so often use phrases like these. If, as Orwell thought, political speech is largely ‘defense of the indefensible’, its purpose will be a lot easier if those to whom it is directed can have their evaluative judgement neutered by comforting linguistic devices.
Which brings us to Brexit, and more specifically the rhetoric of one of its leading supporters, now-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Following his appointment as Foreign Secretary in 2016, Johnson outlined his preferred strategy for leaving the EU:
‘Our policy is having our cake and eating it.’
This, of course, is a play on the familiar English idiom “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”, which means that one cannot achieve two mutually incompatible things (such as maintaining possession of a cake and consuming it). But Johnson twists this phrase to say the exact opposite: we can have two seemingly incompatible things (presumably here referring to receiving the benefits of being connected with the EU without many of the associated costs).
While some criticized Johnson at the time, he did not receive anything close to the level of derision that would be appropriate for a politician speaking nonsense. The reason, I want to suggest, is that by using the familiar linguistic device to get his point across, Johnson was able to put those listening into the pacified state that Orwell fears people revert to when they hear dying metaphors. To see this, imagine that Johnson had instead come up with an original idiom to claim that we can have two mutually incompatible things. He might have said:
‘Our policy is putting it on the slate and not being in debt.’

As will be obvious to everyone familiar with the practices of British pubs in years gone by (as Orwell was, incidentally), these two things cannot both be achieved. One cannot promise to pay for drinks at a later date (putting the amount owed ‘on the slate’) and simultaneously not be in debt. Had Johnson used this phrase, the sheer ridiculousness of what he was saying may be become more apparent.

Or, even better, suppose that Johnson had dispensed with metaphorical talk altogether, said what he meant in plain terms:
‘Our policy is remaining part of the single market while gaining complete control over immigration into the UK.’

As anyone with a vague knowledge of European politics will know, such an outcome is highly unlikely: one of the guiding principles of the EU is the so-called inseparability of the four freedoms (of goods, capital, services, and labour). They come as an all or nothing package; countries cannot pick and choose, and the EU would act in a hugely surprising way if it allowed opt-outs in any circumstances. The proposed policy is therefore just about as infeasible as having a cake and eating it. But, had his point been made in this way, the contradictions of what Johnson was saying would have been much more apparent. By hiding behind metaphorical language, he was able to avoid the sort of scrutiny that may have faced him if he simply said what he meant.
The blithering style that is the modus operandi of the current Prime Minister may mean good business for satirists, but there is something worrying about the vague and rambling language that is becoming commonplace in mainstream politics. We would do well here to heed Orwell’s warnings about how political and linguistic decay often go hand in hand.