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 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

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?”’

‘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?”’

The 42 reasons why Keir Starmer failed

Starmer’s tears show why he failed as PM

The last days of Starmer: A view from inside the No.10 bunker

Apparently not, as the ‘Peoples Vote’ was to remain a Remoaner’s wet dream.

At the........

© The Spectator