I’m sure I’m not the only person in Britain somewhat nonplussed to discover that the British government’s secret contingency plans for no-deal Brexit — now swinging into operation — is called Operation Yellowhammer.
Let’s start with the decision to call it an “Operation”, as though they were preparing to storm the Normandy beaches. This is of a piece with the choice to call the feckless band meeting at 10 Downing Street to plan this shit show the “war cabinet”.
The name of such an operation is an unconstrained choice, pure public relations, so I can think of only a few possible explanations:
- Whereas you or I might think the overriding concern at this moment would be to communicate reassurance, to calm a jittery public, the war cabinet thought it would be much more valuable to arouse a sense of panic and rage. The name is maximally emotional and violent: “yellow” is warning, danger, “hammer” is a crude weapon. (It’s not even like “yellowhammer” is a real word.*)
- Like explanation 1, but the war cabinet wasn’t thinking about the public at all. Instead, Boris Johnson worked everyone up into a fit of Churchillian indignation against the Eurofascists and their normed bananas (nudge, wink), and Operation Yellowhammer seemed like just the thing to arouse corresponding fury in the civil servants who would have to create the plan. That the plan might actually be executed, and the public would learn about the name, was too far in the future to bother with.
- They tried to be reassuring. The British are now just really bad at public relations, which seemed like the last thing they still knew how to do well, after they gave up on diplomacy and sensible government.
-
- Operation Channel Hurricane
-
- Operation Second Armada
-
- Operation Frogs and Sprouts
-
- Project Europa Delenda Est
-
- Project Fear (good proposal, but already used).
* Update: I have been informed that the yellowhammer is actually a widespread little yellow bird that does not travel between Britain and the European continent.
Common Infirmities 
Long time lurker, first time poster: Demonstrating how little I understand this nation, I understood the yellowhammer to refer to that cute little bird that the RSPB likes. Why they would flock together and set up an operation remains a mystery….
I guess I was too quick to claim it was an entirely made up word. I guess this suggests a fourth explanation — a subset of number 3 perhaps — that some bird fancier in the cabinet thought the name of a cute little bird would be appropriately calming, without considering whether some (most?) of the population might not have heard of the bird and have other associations.
The only thing missing are several of the ten plagues.