I didn’t fully realise how much Brexit Derangement Syndrome – the reaction to being on the losing side in the 2016 referendum – had got hold of even people I loved until I complained to a friend that my 2018 play People Like Us (co-written with Jane Robins, who had been asked to leave her North London book group for liking a pro-Brexit Spectator column of mine on Facebook) would close in the small London theatre where it had played for six weeks. It wouldn’t transfer to a bigger London venue, it wouldn’t open in any provincial theatre and it wouldn’t tour – despite selling out before it opened.
They love to call us flag-shaggers – but I’ve never encountered such shameless, crazed flag-shaggers as the ones who like that cheap-looking Toytown flag with all the silly stars on it
Meanwhile, plays which railed against Brexit were doing great. Not doing great as in selling out, but either having public money pumped into them or being bummed up in reviews by their ultra-Remain media cohort. My Country: A work in progress, commissioned from Carol Ann Duffy, was put on for a lovely long run at the National Theatre and then taken on tour around the country until a year after the Leave vote.
Perhaps the hope of the playwright was that passing proles might venture in, like awed apes entering a cathedral, hear the impassioned speeches of the central character Britannia (sample: ‘I am your memory… I have breathed you in, like air, and breathed you out as prayer, or speech, or song’) and demand an immediate referendum rerun? To quote one Guardian writer in full-on knicker-wetting mode:
‘Now, though, Britannia is worried about what we have become, as well she might be, and at the end of the play she turns to the audience and says, with real anxiety but without admonishment: “Are you listening? Do I hear you listening?”’
Apparently not, as the ‘Peoples Vote’ was to remain a Remoaner’s wet dream.
At the Camden People’s Theatre, there was the truly meta experience of Miss Brexit, an ‘extravagant satire’ described as:
‘In post-Brexit England, young European actors are no longer welcome. They have worked for decades to erase their identities in order to fit an Anglocentric industry. It’s a matter of survival. Only Miss Brexit will be allowed leave to remain in the UK and pursue the Anglo-American dream. But what does it take to become Miss Brexit? Who will be capable of erasing their identity and talk like a Brit, think like a Brit, live like a Brit? Who will be willing to exchange their national cuisine for mashed potato? In this show we meet real people with unique stories. They all deal with the consequences of Brexit affecting their lives in England and their future as performers.’
Sounds like a right royal knees-up!
Jane and I didn’t want public money; just a chance to play at other theatres, especially in places which had voted Leave. But the theatrical industry is – like all branches of showbiz – so stiflingly, uniformly Remain that we never got the chance. I was complaining to my mate about this and when I’d finished, he looked me straight in the eye and said ‘Good’. As in ‘Good – I’m glad your dream was dashed.’
Before this incident, I’d thought of Brexit Derangement Syndrome as being a ruling-class reaction to hoi polloi daring to go against what their betters and wetters had told them to do. Their spawn, many of them at ‘Glasto’ (and so not bothering to vote, thus demonstrating their arrogance and entitlement) had their say on social media straight after the result: ‘If you give a vote to every man and his dog, you have to be prepared for the answer you get’ ran one post. ‘The chavs have won, mate… I’m already looking into dual citizenship.’ went another.
It was a strange time, full of the Magical Thinking which plagues modern political debate, from the magical migrants who don’t create a need for more housing to the magical men whose penises are female. Magical Remainers often identified as younger than they are. A spry Ian McEwan, at 68, drooled over the idea of ‘oldsters, Brexiteers, freshly in their graves.’ During a social media spat, a Remainer told me that my time was over, and I should make way for the youth, of which he was one; he was three years older than me.
We could point and laugh at those as obviously and avoidably deranged as the ‘Stop Brexit man’ Steve Bray – who continues to squat outside parliament with a megaphone. And indeed at the capering clowns who make up ‘Dance Europa!’, a Swindon-based group led by a man with a double hip replacement who turns 68 this month. They entertained the National Rejoin March on Saturday, featuring such thrusting luminaries as Terry Christian, Shola Mos-Shogbamimu and Femi Oluwole, with Lord Kinnock, fresh off the gravy train, nipping in for a special appearance. We know these people to be also-rans whose bitterness at being rejected a decade ago has left them in a permanent state of incredulity, like a lover rejected for someone more dashing. But sometimes those suffering from BDS look perfectly normal – until the spittle-flecked invective starts the moment the B-word is mentioned.
The snide asides I cheerily bore in the months after Victory Morn have quieted, only occasionally to flare up like spiritual shingles. Instead the Remainers entered a state which I dubbed ‘Le Bouder Grand’ (the Big Sulk), rallying when a chancer Labour politician at some by-election moots the re-joining dead horse, only to perform a reverse ferret when it looks like it will only increase Reform’s popularity.
The reasons they give for rejoining are remarkably petty-minded. Having to queue up a little longer at the airport. Having to pay a British worker a bit more money because the ones who’d work for less went home. Not being able to travel to one’s sun-trap in Spain with the slippery ease as before. As Gareth Roberts summed up so pithily, ‘The Remain movement was never about Europe, really. It was about British snobbery.’ To see this gaggle of Hyacinth Buckets get periodically into a state over the smallest of domestic details, while dressing it up as a battle for the soul of the Brotherhood of Man, never fails to amuse.
I enjoy a feud as much as the next hack. But I can say with my hand on my heart that had my side lost – as I fully expected it to – I’d never have humiliated myself or my side by behaving like such a bad loser. I’d have shrugged somewhat shamefacedly and proceeded to appreciate the benefits that remaining might bring. Did we get any such courtesy in return for the benefits of Brexit – everything from the tampon tax to the fast rolling out of the vaccine? Not a sniff. Because it wasn’t about real life; it was about mindless fealty to the Union. They love to call us flag-shaggers – but I’ve never encountered such shameless, crazed flag-shaggers as the ones who like that cheap-looking Toytown flag with all the silly stars on it.
Remainers are an over-emotional lot. The words they use about the fateful sundering could be those of a lovelorn swain, separated from their object of devotion by a cruel captor, and thus more outlandishly idealised as the years go by. The puns on their shoddy banners alone mark them out as of sub-par intelligence. ‘WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE EU’ is a popular one. As for their sense of perspective, their spiritual leader Steve Bray said it best, ‘We are all going to end up in hell after Brexit happens.’
I still feel that I’ve lost a few friends to a cult. But I don’t care; I have many left who I’ve agreed to disagree with. Most of my friends are Remainers. As for me, I’m still an unrepentant Brexiteer. After I found myself in a wheelchair some time ago, my NHS physio’s last words to me as she signed me off were: ‘This isn’t the end of your recovery – it’s the start.’ That’s how I see Brexit. Our problem is too little of it, like still subscribing to the European Convention for Human Rights which places the importance of a ‘right to family life’ over our ability to deported convicted rapists back to their country of origin.
But it’s here, it’s ours, we won it fairly – and we’re keeping it. So the sooner the Long BDS sufferers get over it – and that includes the clown who couldn’t resist blasting the European anthem over Starmer’s resignation speech, thereby slightly reducing the relish with which all right-minded people enjoyed it – the better it’ll be for you.
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