This is not the Charge of the Light Brigade:

The original of the cartoon image used to illustrate this Times article about the mad dash for Brexit clearly alludes to the Charge of the Light Brigade, but is in fact a painting of quite another Charge. Just so you know: the original is Elizabeth Southernden Thompson's painting of the Charge of the Royal Scots Greys at Waterloo in 1815, known as "Scotland For Ever". It's the wrong cavalry (heavy not light), wrong enemy (France not Russia), wrong war (Napoleonic not Crimean). And above all, completely the wrong outcome (victory not catastrophe). [caption id="attachment_1744" align="alignnone" width="800"] Magnificent, but it's not the Light Brigade / Elizabeth Southernden Thompson, Lady Butler, "Scotland for Ever", Leeds Art Gallery[/caption] Here is the cartoon in context: [caption id="attachment_1742" align="alignnone" width="856"] "Boldly they rode into the jaws of Brexit", The Times, 19 August 2017.[/caption] The illustration (and cod-quotation, "Boldly they rode Into the jaws of Brexit") was prompted by the passage:

Today, Brexit looks increasingly less like Dunkirk and more like the charge of the light brigade; a combination of miscommunication and tactical errors turned into disaster.... We are not too late. Sometimes the best strategy is turn back.

You probably know all of this already. Which is partly my point (if I have one at all). The "Charge of the Light Brigade" is a metaphor fully armed and desperate to see action. (Rather like the Light Brigade itself on the morning of the 25th October 1854.) Even the word "Charge" itself has numerous relevant connotations rolled into itself - a headlong rush, a commitment, a cost, a burden, an accusation, an exhortation, an electric energy. It's a cliche ready to hand at the top of every writer's Big Box of Cliches. But what does it "mean"?