“Do you want the polite badge or the other one?” a demonstrator asks, offering Steve Bray a choice between “never trust a Tory” and “fuck the Tories”. Bray deliberates for a moment before pinning the latter on his jacket.
It’s midday on a Wednesday in Westminster, and Bray, in a top hat emblazoned with “Why Brexit?”, has been joined by about a dozen other protesters brandishing anti-government signs and wearing EU colours on a traffic island overlooking parliament. A small dog sports a blue and yellow badge that reads: “saboteur”.
I saw James Cleverly. He mouthed something I won’t repeat
Bray, 53, from Port Talbot in Wales, has been protesting Brexit since the referendum six years ago. Through amplifiers, he blares anti-Tory songs; today it’s a mashup of the Muppets theme and the “Imperial March” from Star Wars that takes aim at Rishi Sunak. “We had one for Liz Truss, but we didn’t play that for very long.” Many of the lyrics are composed by Gareth, a former actor with flowing silver hair who joins Bray most weeks. Others take part when they can: Elke, a 76-year-old German, tells me she tries to come once a month.
Bray supports himself by working part-time as a numismatist, selling old coins, and receives donations through a crowdfunder. During our conversation, several people approach to shake his hand or ask for a photo. A man wearing a sign reading “JESUS SAVES FROM SIN REPENT” asks Bray how he’s doing. “Good, good, yourself Ken?”
Bray is a divisive figure in Westminster; Conservative politicians often heckle him while walking past. “I saw James Cleverly,” he tells me, “he mouthed something I won’t repeat.” Jacob Rees-Mogg always tries to shake his hand. “He likes to disarm. Me being the better man, I can’t not shake his hand, which is a dilemma.”
He blames politicians, not voters, for Brexit. “I have found it a difficult struggle within myself. But somehow you have to forgive people that voted to leave,” he says. “They believed they were doing it for a better life for everybody.” He’s hopeful, though, that opinions are changing: “People… are beginning to realise that they were deceived,” he says.
In Bray’s opinion, protesters can get things wrong: he thinks Just Stop Oil activists went too far when they threw soup over a glass-covered Van Gogh painting. “I agree with the message, I just don’t agree with the delivery of that message.” But he’s concerned about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, which strengthened police power to stop noisy protests—even if “it didn’t really work out” when police tried to use the law against him by seizing two of his amplifiers. “A few weeks later, they’re calling me up saying they’re clogging up their evidence room, and can I come and collect them?”
As Prime Minister’s Questions finishes in the House of Commons, Bray dashes off to catch Sunak leaving. That morning he had managed to call the PM a “Tory toerag” as he entered parliament, but this time he returns frustrated. “He went out the bottom gate again—Rishi doesn’t give us a chance, like Boris did.”
As I’m about to leave I’m approached by a man who, Bray tells me, has a right-wing YouTube channel. The man thrusts a phone in my face, filming me while demanding to know whether I work for the BBC. The anti-Brexit crowd mobilises quickly: several demonstrators raise their signs to block his camera, and Gareth and another silver-haired man argue with him as he shoves back against them. “What we need,” Bray sighs, “are whistles. So when he comes we can blow.” As I walk away, Bray plays a new song—something about the Conservative party and Star Trek—so loud it drowns out the shouting.
