Conferencing With ‘Stop Brexit’ Bray and Co.

When the speeches at last month’s National Conservative conference first became a little too much to stomach, I wandered outside for some peace, only to be confronted by banners and a blaring sound system. Steve Bray and co. were in town.

They have spent more than half a decade standing outside the halls of power, urging officials, at first, to “STOP BREXIT,” and later interrupting live news broadcasts to celebrate Boris Johnson’s departure from power, while also winding up (mostly Tory) politicians by chanting about “lies” and “corruption.”

Mr. Bray, alongside comrades Gareth, Sylvia, and a few others, had turned up to the conference on the apparent misunderstanding that it was some kind of fascistic Tory plot to take the country “back” to the 1950s. (In fact, most of the attendees hated the Conservative Party, as I explained here, because it continually makes grand promises while stabbing ‘small-c’ conservatives in the back.) But I was glad they came; I must have spent a good hour or so talking to the group over the course of the three days, and left finding them well-meaning, genuine, and—most importantly, given their style of protest—funny.

Those of us who sat at the back of the conference hall had to lean forward on more than one occasion as the doors swung open, burying the noise of the speaker below that of the sound system outside. “It’s all lights and music,” Mr. Bray told me, adding that their aim was to “annoy” those in charge. (10 points there!) I was particularly pleased to hear that the group disagrees with protest tactics—such as supergluing oneself to a busy road and blocking both the public and emergency services—that seek simply to disrupt the day-to-day lives of ordinary citizens. (All the more disappointing, then, that Mr. Bray should choose to actively promote one of the worst offenders on this front, Just Stop Oil.) Gareth, who is behind much of the music regularly blasted towards the Houses of Parliament, has also spoken out against intimidatory demonstration tactics such as mask-wearing; “If,” he argues, “you’re up to protest, show your face. If you’re not brave enough to do that, you ain’t brave enough to be there.”

These, to be critical, should have stopped short of branding first-day attendees (and I don’t just mean politicians and journalists), “fascists” and telling those leaving the hall to “take the walk of shame,” all while branding a camera. I felt these efforts extended a little beyond “annoyance” and into the realm of intimidation, particularly for those who prefer to keep their political and private lives completely separate. This might have stopped after the group realised many attendees held no more respect for the Conservative Party than them, but surely it was counterintuitive for it to have taken place at all.

I should stress here that I don’t believe the demonstrators—some of whom have voted Tory in the past—would have stopped the conference from taking place even if they could have done so. They appeared more interested in letting all know about their disappointment in the leading party, a point on which, again, they made more friends than they might have first considered possible.

Some of the conference speakers weren’t as pleased to see (or, more correctly, hear) those demonstrating outside as I was. “They need,” Darren Grimes of GB News insisted, “to look at themselves in the mirror.” I, of course, found a good number of their arguments (particularly in relation to Brexit) tired, but would struggle to argue that some of the points being repeated over and over again inside the conference were any less spent. It was also at least possible to question their arguments, whereas inside the hall, you had to be a very lucky guest to spark an on-stage conversation.

For me, these discussions were one of the highlights of the week. With the country—and the conservative ‘movement’ in particular—in the state it’s in, I have nothing but respect for those who fill their spare time properly annoying those responsible.