Blaming Brexit for everything has become a kind of tic among the great and good. Like the buck-passing politicians who used to blame everything on Brussels, the cultural elites have taken to blaming all manner of ills on the British people’s revolt against the EU back in 2016. Economic stagnation? Brexit! Covid deaths? Brexit! Poor mental-health provision? That’s the fault of Brexit, too – according to some Guardianistas, at least.
One of the most underrated Brexit benefits is the periodic meltdowns it causes among our supposed betters
Now we have learned of Vote Leave’s latest, innocent victim: Rufus Wainwright’s West End prospects. According to the singer-songwriter and composer, Brexit is to blame for the poor reception to his show, Opening Night, which has closed early after some bad reviews and audience walkouts. This Sheridan Smith-fronted musical, Wainwright’s first foray into the genre, apparently drew on more avant-garde influences and so sailed right over the heads of the unenlightened English.
‘I do feel that since Brexit, England has entered into a darker corridor where it is a little more narrow in its outlook’, Wainwright has told the Guardian. ‘The staging and the rhythm [of the show] is more European and there was a vitriolic reaction against that.’ While he admits the show wasn’t perfect, he laments ‘this thing of shutting it down if it’s not exactly what you want’. This is ‘not really the theatrical lane that I want to live in’, he adds.
Well, as a Leaver, I feel terrible. When I read Wainwright’s pained words it really stung, just as it does every time some overpaid media figure moans on social media about having to endure a slightly longer queue at passport control ahead of a continental skiing weekend. Had I known my vote against an anti-democratic Brussels would mildly inconvenience Jon Sopel, or complicate the musical-theatre career of our Rufus, I might have reconsidered. They didn’t put this on the side of the big red bus, did they? Red Wallers must also be mortified.
In all seriousness, Wainwright’s moan is a classic of the Brexit-bashing genre – in that it doesn’t make any sense. He whines about the show’s snotty reviews, even though Opening Night was panned by such Faragist organs as the New York Times (‘algorithmically bland’), the New Statesman (‘chaotic and masochistic’) and gay men’s mag Attitude (‘sorely lacking in camp’). Wainwright must also be ‘sorely lacking’ in basic observation skills if he thinks your average West End regular is a Brexiteer.
I suppose he thought he was making a more subtle point, about how Brexit has cast an artistic pall over these islands, subtly closing minds even among those with otherwise immaculate tastes. Or it could be that people just didn’t like his stupid musical. We’ll never know for sure, I suppose. But if we’re going to blame Brexit for anything here surely it is making luvvies even more insufferable and self-victimising than they were before.
Wainwright is hardly the worst offender, given he’s Canadian-American and clearly new to this. Stephen Fry still won’t stop banging on about Brexit. Hilary Mantel has threatened to leave the UK and ‘become a European again’. After 2016, there was a slew of absurd Remoaning novels, notes the Times’s Laura Freeman. Autumn, by Ali Smith, is credited as the ‘first post-Brexit novel’. In it, gangs of thugs chant, ‘First we’ll get the Poles. And then we’ll get the Muslims. Then we’ll get the gyppos, then the gays.’ This is a bigoted fever dream masquerading as art.
‘Name me one Brexit benefit?!’ This is the question the diehards of Remainer Twitter always throw at Leavers, usually after we’ve already listed several. For me, one of the most underrated Brexit benefits – after having more democratic control over the laws that govern us and all that – is the periodic meltdowns it causes among our supposed betters in the cultural elites. You know, the sort of people who accuse Brexiteers of being irrational and overly emotional, even as they blame Brexit for all of their problems. It’s certainly kept me entertained these past eight years. Never stop laughing at them.
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