The real big news on Brexit at the moment is that Germany is blocking discussion of the status of EU citizens living in UK and soon to be former EU citizens living in the EU outside the UK. They are sticking to the line that nothing will be discussed until Article 50 is invoked and the leaving process starts officially. But although this iilustrates just how weak the UK's barganing position, this was something that was completely predictable. More fun is the revelation of an official's notes from a secret UK government meeting about Brexit.
The phrase from that handwritten document that caught my eye was the 'having your cake and eating it' line. This was famously used by demiwit Boris Johnson during the referendum campaign. I'd rather assumed that this was a not particularly well coded message that he wasn't taking the issue seriously at all. You can, after all, manifestly not simultaneously possess a cake and eat it. This idea pops up all over the place. Most rigorously it is exemplified by the scientific Law of Conservation of Matter. It's a bit out of date now. Einstein pointed out that matter can be transformed into energy, that is the whole point of the E=mc2. But even the most advanced physics won't let you do two things with the same amount of matter.
The same idea occurs in other languages. The French say you can't have the butter and the butter money. In Nordic countries you can't have the wife drunk and the barrel full. But in England now it looks like the phrase will end up getting associated with Brexit which might mean we need to coin a new one for everyday use. Here's my suggestion.
Having a half wit foreign secretary and still being taken seriously as a country
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