Toby Young Toby Young

Panic of the playwrights

These plays are full of foreboding about Ireland, Scotland, and the future — except one

Earlier this week the Guardian launched ‘Brexit Shorts’, a series of monologues written by Britain’s ‘leading playwrights’ about the aftermath of the EU referendum. Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘What fresh hell is this?’ But bear with me. Watching the first batch of these short films, which are on the Guardian website, isn’t complete purgatory. Not because they’re much good, obviously — although one is, and I’ll come to that in a moment. But because the reason these writers are so anxious about Brexit is due to their uncritical acceptance of Project Fear. Perhaps they’ll become a little less hysterical once they’ve been introduced to some solid facts.

Take ‘Your Ma’s a Hard Brexit’ by Stacey Gregg, which is set among the ‘peace lines’ separating Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods in Belfast. It’s not a fully fledged drama — more a piece of agitprop. And it makes the same point over and over again, namely, that if the UK leaves the European Union there will inevitably be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. ‘We know what it means to be divided,’ says the protagonist, a ‘peace-worker’ played by Bronagh Gallagher. Then she says something a bit odd: ‘I remember the border, do you? Wasn’t much craic.’

Now there hasn’t been a hard border in Ireland since 1923 when the Common Travel Area was first established. Gallagher may not be in her first flush, but she doesn’t look old enough to be able to ‘remember’ something that hasn’t existed for 94 years. The explanation can only be that Stacey Gregg has swallowed the Remain line that the soft border in Ireland is contingent on our EU membership. Well, Stacey, I have some good news: it isn’t. It existed for 50 years before we joined in 1973 and will continue to exist long after we’ve left.

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