1 February 2020
By Göran R Buckhorn
…and then there were 27.
So, we had to say farewell to Great Britain after all – although some heads of EU member states insisted that it was not a ‘goodbye’, it was an ‘auf wiedersehen’ or an ‘au revoir’. Time will tell.
The term ‘Brexit’ has made its rounds also here on HTBS, at least if there was a connection to the sport of rowing. Already four years ago, on 26 February 2016 to be more exact, our French correspondent Hélène Rémond produced a scoop of sorts when she published an article about the French editorial cartoonist ‘Kak’, who had a ‘rowing cartoon’ published in the newspaper L’Opinion, “How a Cartoon of a Racing Shell Explains Britain’s Brexit”.
It was an image of a quadruple scull with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at stroke, French President François Hollande at ‘3’, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker at ‘2’ and a very relaxed British Prime Minister David Cameron at bow. Today, only Merkel is still in power.
The main reason I’m bringing up this cartoon again is not to gloat or lament on the Brexit matter, no, it’s to mainly point out that Hélène’s interview of ‘Kak’ and his rowing cartoon is the most viewed of all HTBS entries. At the end of 2016, the year it was published, it had had 11,386 views. As of the time of writing this, on 1 February 2020, it has had 13,377 views (and counting).
Who said that sports and politics do not mix?