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| Jeremy Hunt poses in a maze. Behind him lurks the Brexit Minotaur | Jeremy Hunt poses in a maze. Behind him lurks the Brexit Minotaur |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| The moment over the weekend when the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and his fellow European foreign ministers posed grinning and waving for a picture in the middle of a maze must have been one of those brief pauses of optimism in the Brexit process when a happy outcome seemed just a few laughing circuits of the greenery away – only for Arlene Foster or Jacob Rees-Mogg to appear at the next turn of the labyrinth with axe in hand and a determination to stay entrenched for ever and ever and ever. | The moment over the weekend when the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and his fellow European foreign ministers posed grinning and waving for a picture in the middle of a maze must have been one of those brief pauses of optimism in the Brexit process when a happy outcome seemed just a few laughing circuits of the greenery away – only for Arlene Foster or Jacob Rees-Mogg to appear at the next turn of the labyrinth with axe in hand and a determination to stay entrenched for ever and ever and ever. |
| A softly melancholic autumnal scatter of brown leaves across the emerald hedge-tops hints at winter closing in and the possibility – probability? – that the government’s cursed meanderings will leave Britain by the end of it completely and utterly lost. It was taken at Chevening, a country house in Kent at the prime minister’s disposal, which has a special association with the Foreign Office and whose maze is suggestive of a different age of elite diplomacy, when John le Carré’s George Smiley might have given his latest unsmiling account of the labyrinthine games of cold war espionage to a senior minister among these discreet walks. | A softly melancholic autumnal scatter of brown leaves across the emerald hedge-tops hints at winter closing in and the possibility – probability? – that the government’s cursed meanderings will leave Britain by the end of it completely and utterly lost. It was taken at Chevening, a country house in Kent at the prime minister’s disposal, which has a special association with the Foreign Office and whose maze is suggestive of a different age of elite diplomacy, when John le Carré’s George Smiley might have given his latest unsmiling account of the labyrinthine games of cold war espionage to a senior minister among these discreet walks. |
| Where do the Brexit negotiations stand? | |
| The maze in this picture may conjure up Alice in Wonderland realms of pastoral delirium, but the fun is surely all under control. The hedges have been freshly trimmed by government gardeners. Hunt and his guests stand under the tree that marks the very centre of the maze and it too is precisely trimmed to create a green cone floating sublimely in space. Far from a world turned upside down, this is a photograph of nature and, by implication, the whole universe under the control of sane human minds. No wonder Europe’s foreign ministers look happy. This Foreign Office maze is a mandarin representation of diplomacy as diplomats like to imagine it: a complex yet ultimately decodable and winnable game. | The maze in this picture may conjure up Alice in Wonderland realms of pastoral delirium, but the fun is surely all under control. The hedges have been freshly trimmed by government gardeners. Hunt and his guests stand under the tree that marks the very centre of the maze and it too is precisely trimmed to create a green cone floating sublimely in space. Far from a world turned upside down, this is a photograph of nature and, by implication, the whole universe under the control of sane human minds. No wonder Europe’s foreign ministers look happy. This Foreign Office maze is a mandarin representation of diplomacy as diplomats like to imagine it: a complex yet ultimately decodable and winnable game. |
| The trouble is that, like their equivalents 104 years ago who might have posed on a croquet pitch or at a grand ball with no idea what the summer of 1914 might come to evoke in history, how cruelly ironic their moustached calm would look in time, these jolly negotiators are not playing the old rational games any more. The balance of power has been replaced by the power of the unbalanced. Nationalist sentiment has once again disrupted Europe’s peace of mind. | The trouble is that, like their equivalents 104 years ago who might have posed on a croquet pitch or at a grand ball with no idea what the summer of 1914 might come to evoke in history, how cruelly ironic their moustached calm would look in time, these jolly negotiators are not playing the old rational games any more. The balance of power has been replaced by the power of the unbalanced. Nationalist sentiment has once again disrupted Europe’s peace of mind. |
| The sun shines on this maze, infusing its manicured green with life and joy. Yet mazes always had their dark side. The labyrinth of Crete in Greek legend was a lethal subterranean network of caverns haunted by the half-man, half-bull Minotaur. For surrealist artists in the 1930s, who called their magazine Minotaure, the claustophobic maze under the palace of King Minos was a potent image of the violence and chaos of the unconscious that was seeping out into hysterical populist mass politics in the age of Hitler. Picasso even included the Minotaur in his prescient painting of the coming world war, Guernica. Those stranger mazes hide behind this photograph of a civilised garden get-together. | The sun shines on this maze, infusing its manicured green with life and joy. Yet mazes always had their dark side. The labyrinth of Crete in Greek legend was a lethal subterranean network of caverns haunted by the half-man, half-bull Minotaur. For surrealist artists in the 1930s, who called their magazine Minotaure, the claustophobic maze under the palace of King Minos was a potent image of the violence and chaos of the unconscious that was seeping out into hysterical populist mass politics in the age of Hitler. Picasso even included the Minotaur in his prescient painting of the coming world war, Guernica. Those stranger mazes hide behind this photograph of a civilised garden get-together. |
| Why ‘no surrender’ on Brexit is a bad strategy for the DUP | Bobby McDonagh | |
| The foreign ministers are in sunlight, yet just behind them, as if about to engulf them, is the dark shadow under the radiating tree. They’re comically compressed into their fortress of foliage, with shorter members of the group barely getting their faces above the leaves. This is a poignant image of Hunt and his counterparts looking as if they are sure there is a path out of here. The middle of a maze is a fine place to be when you think it will only take 10 minutes of cheerful fun to negotiate the path. The passages between bright hedge tops look harmless, but their shade seems deep. | The foreign ministers are in sunlight, yet just behind them, as if about to engulf them, is the dark shadow under the radiating tree. They’re comically compressed into their fortress of foliage, with shorter members of the group barely getting their faces above the leaves. This is a poignant image of Hunt and his counterparts looking as if they are sure there is a path out of here. The middle of a maze is a fine place to be when you think it will only take 10 minutes of cheerful fun to negotiate the path. The passages between bright hedge tops look harmless, but their shade seems deep. |
| It would be easy to think this photograph was taken anywhere in Europe. Mazes grow out of the continent’s common heritage. They are depicted in Renaissance art. The palace of Versailles provided the model of the garden maze as a pleasure walk in the 17th century. This maze is part of a European civilisation that Britain gladly joined in the days when aristocrats shaped their gardens to suggest the paintings of Claude Monet. | It would be easy to think this photograph was taken anywhere in Europe. Mazes grow out of the continent’s common heritage. They are depicted in Renaissance art. The palace of Versailles provided the model of the garden maze as a pleasure walk in the 17th century. This maze is part of a European civilisation that Britain gladly joined in the days when aristocrats shaped their gardens to suggest the paintings of Claude Monet. |
| But this is a maze in Kent and these ministers are trying to deal with Britain’s repudiation of our European identity. Jeremy Hunt smiles widest of all, in the middle of the group. Behind him lurks the Brexit Minotaur. | But this is a maze in Kent and these ministers are trying to deal with Britain’s repudiation of our European identity. Jeremy Hunt smiles widest of all, in the middle of the group. Behind him lurks the Brexit Minotaur. |
| • Jonathan Jones writes on art for the Guardian | • Jonathan Jones writes on art for the Guardian |
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| Framing the debate | Framing the debate |
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| European Union | European Union |
| Jeremy Hunt | Jeremy Hunt |
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