The remain fightback starts here. In a rice factory in Essex. For one night only, live from the Tilda Pyramid stage, in front of an audience of at least a few dozen, I give you a gala performance of Those We Have Loved. Featuring Nicky Morgan on lead vocals, David Miliband on lead guitar and Nick Clegg on drums. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t really want until they’ve gone.
“Hello Tilda,” Morgan yelled, before segueing seamlessly into her greatest Brexit hits. The leavers were engaged in a collective act of self-delusion and it was time for MPs to put the national interest first and stay in the customs union and the single market. Miliband and Clegg then got to do their brief solos, which more or less echoed what Morgan had already said. Then it was all over. Thank you and good night.
Once the four-second ovation had died down, it was time for the encore. Or at least questions. Most of which verged on the existential. Why them? Why now? Why here? Hadn’t all this already been said countless times already? No one really seemed to have a very satisfactory answer. Some things just were what they were.
The greatest confusion centred on why Miliband had suddenly decided to drop in on the UK after five years in the US to give us his Brexit thoughts. David appeared nonplussed. His was the highest calling. He was here because he was the Saviour™. And it was his duty to come back every now and again to remind us of what we were missing. That’s what Saviours™ did. They let us know how things could have been if only we had kept the faith. It was his act of kindness to an ungrateful nation.
It had been like this: he had been hanging out in New York, jamming with a few dudes, when he’d got the phone call from Nick and Nicky. And he just couldn’t resist the chance of playing a UK gig with such iconic political figures. So he’d dropped everything, taken the red-eye – business class, of course: every Messiah deserved a break – to London, done a quick tour of the Today studios and here he was. Playing to 20,000 bags of rice. You Win a Grain.
“Bregsit is a tragedy,” he crooned. He pronounces Brexit in exactly the same way as Tony Blair. It must be a New Labour thing. “But it doesn’t have to be a choice between a hard Bregsit and a chaotic Bregsit.”
Did this signal a return to British politics, or was it just a one-off appearance? “It’s not the beginning, middle or end of anything,” Miliband said gnomically. He wasn’t here to start a new cross-party anti-Bregsit group. He was just here. To make a contribution. To serve and to save. He might be back at some point. And there again, he might not be. He was like the wind. A prophet is not without honour except in his own land. David wiped away a tear.
It wasn’t long before someone asked about the artistic differences in the 2010 supergroup, the Dave and Ed Mili Band. Were the two brothers still talking after that difficult second album? David suddenly went all coy. What went on between him and Ed had always been private and he was going to keep it that way. Which came as news to everyone who had witnessed their very public bust-up over the leadership of the Labour party.
Morgan then fielded a few questions before realising that no one had wanted to ask Clegg anything. The drummer’s lot. She generously chose to allow him to have the last word. “Never underestimate the narcissism of the Brexiters,” he declared.
And never underestimate the narcissism of former politicians who fail to realise that the public is no longer that interested in what they have to say. Who just can’t bear to confront the silence of their mortality. David, Nick and Nicky had spoken. But almost no one had listened. Though maybe that had been the point all along. As a metaphor for the futility of Brexit, it couldn’t have been bettered.