Good

Sometimes, telling someone to fuck off is the right thing to do.

A minister has refused to apologise after admitting to using “colourful language” in a terse encounter outside parliament with a regular Westminster protester.

In a video shared by Steve Bray, an activist known for shouting anti-Brexit and anti-government slogans during broadcast interviews, the Foreign Office minister Nigel Adams appears to use a four-letter swear word twice during a filmed meeting lasting less than two minutes.

After being approached while walking by the gates surrounding the Houses of Parliament, a tense exchange results in Adams telling Bray: “Why don’t you talk to your MP and fuck off?”

Bray claims that he is “holding MPs to account.” No, he isn’t. He is a tedious, obsessive, single-issue bore who wants to impose his politics on the rest of us. He fails to understand the principle of losers’ consent. Still he is banging on about his beloved EU five years after we voted to leave. I’m not remotely surprised by Adams’ reaction here. It was appropriate because this kind of obsessive doesn’t understand either a democratic outcome or a polite rebuff.

In a statement, Adams did not apologise but instead argued his actions “no doubt reflected” the feelings of other MPs.

Not just MPs. Bray needs to be told to fuck off good and hard until such time as he gets the message. His side lost. Time to pack up and go home, because we are not rejoining. We had the arguments and a vote. We had the tiresome whining and shenanigans of the sore losers. Now we have left. That’s it. Done. We have had enough of Bray and his tiresome whining – well, I certainly have. As was pointed out to him, the appropriate channel is via his own MP if he has something to say.

He has spent the last few years harassing, following and hurling abuse at elected parliamentarians as well as interrupting journalists, preventing some from doing their job of reporting the news and conducting interviews.

Oddly enough, despite my antipathy for both groups, I find that I have some slight sympathy here. Bray is the equivalent of the nutter on the bus.