• Controversy The disputed right to protest in the United Kingdom

Who. Steve Bray (54) has been demonstrating against Brexit in front of the British Parliament for six years and has created the platform Stand of Defiance European Movement. What. Police have seized his megaphone several times and he is increasingly harassed by the government's anti-protest laws. Why. Bray and his crew defy warnings: "We all live in the tragedy of Brexit."

Steve Bray is sick of having his megaphone played. For more than six years he has been the already known as Stop Brexit Man demonstrating before the British Parliament, entrenched with his crew in that traffic island in Westminster that has something of a pirate ship or yellow submarine, dancing to the sound of the Beatles with the lyrics adapted to the times: "We all live in the tragedy of Brexit".

"The police have not left us alone for a year, when they pulled out of their sleeves that fascist law with which they intend to prohibit all kinds of demonstrations with the excuse that they disturb the public," laments Bray between a sea of blue flags and in the midst of the pro-European hubbub of his long twenty followers.

The new Law of Public Order has gone even further, as the republican demonstrators could well verify during the coronation of Carlos III. The latest threat is the government's attempt to use the so-called Henry VIII clauses to amend legislation that was defeated in its passage through the House of Lords and that aims to ban protests that have "a cumulative effect" and that cause an impact on the daily lives of citizens.

"Something else is plotting and we realize because the police pressure is increasing," says Bray. "They threaten to take away our megaphone again. They advise us not to obstruct the circulation of pedestrians on the traffic island. They no longer know what to invent to silence us... But we're not going to shut up."

The Italian anti-fascist song Bella Ciao is already part of the soundtrack of the troupe led by Stop Brexit Man. In his day they sang to Johnson the Bye Bye Boris until he resigned. And in recent weeks they have added to the repertoire a version of Tom Jones' Delilah, retitled Why, why, why Suella, dedicated to the Secretary of the Interior Suella Braverman.

"Controlling immigration was just another fantasy, exports have plummeted, the shopping basket has risen more than in all of Europe," laments Steve Bray. "Where are the famous Brexit dividends? How long are we going to keep swallowing this string of lies?"

Farage's antithesis

Since he began his crusade six years ago, Bray have become something like the antithesis of Nigel Farage, once dubbed by Trump as Mr. Brexit. "And yet Farage has at least had the courage to acknowledge in public that Brexit has failed, something that the Tories, not even Labour, who have fallen into an unforgivable pact of silence, do not deign to admit," says Bray.

The 54-year-old from Wales campaigned to remain in the June 2016 referendum, trying in vain to convince his neighbours of the benefit that Port Talbot had taken from European funds. After the Brexit victory, she turned to online activism. Tired of spending the day arguing with trolls, he decided to go offline and head with his banners and hat to London.

He left behind his profession as an electrical engineer, sold part of his numismatic collection and with that he had money to withstand the pull of the first year in the British capital, in the times of Theresa May. His loud protests went further with Boris Johnson, until the day he sat on a toilet in Downing Street, in protest against the boycott of the conservatives to a law that sought to prevent discharges without purifying the rivers.

"Brexit was the beginning of something bigger," he laments. "It was carte blanche for deregulation, corruption, social cuts, the suppression of our most fundamental rights, from strike to protest. I have seen four prime ministers pass in all this time, and all the indecency and immorality of our politicians has come to the surface."

"People are starting to get very fed up with all this," says Steve Bray, who refers to the recent Focaldata survey: 63% of Britons think that Brexit has created more problems than it has solved. "It is not too late to return to the EU, as they would have us believe. But the task before us is even bigger: we need to change the political system that has plunged us headlong into this mess."

  • Nigel Farage
  • London
  • Theresa May
  • Boris Johnson
  • Brexit

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