London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

‘Bloody difficult women’: Brexit play hits the London stage

‘Bloody difficult women’: Brexit play hits the London stage

Theresa May and pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller are key characters in a new drama about Britain’s battle over Europe

They were both called “bloody difficult women”. Yet a play opening in London in the new year will portray Theresa May and the anti-Brexit activist Gina Miller as having more in common than stubbornness.

Bloody Difficult Women will even suggest that their similar characteristics and experiences – both are diligently hard workers and share a love of cricket – could have made them friends if they had not been political opponents over parliament’s say over Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

“It’s a psychological human drama about idealism, obsession and delusion,” says playwright Tim Walker. “A tragedy too, certainly for May, and one about enormous pressures and personal threats for Miller.”

Wealthy businesswoman Miller was born in British Guyana and moved to the UK aged 10. In 2016 she decided to take the government to court over Article 50, the UK’s EU exit clause. “I was furious about people seeing themselves as being above the law by trying to bypass parliament,” she says.

Yet, as the drama spells out, while campaigning she experienced hideous abuse – some of it racist (“go back to where you come from” was a regular refrain) and some sexist. Death threats were so severe she had to hire private protection. “We also put cameras around the house and installed panic buttons. And I had to have cease-and-desist letters sent to eight individuals.”

The play depicts May being advised by two fictional civil servants (Rosen and Guilden – names inspired by Hamlet’s friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) with the younger Guilden eventually resigning because of their Remainer beliefs. Miller, on the other hand, is advised by her third husband, Alan.

In a scene midway through the play, the two women address the audience. “When a man takes a stand on something, he is seen as a maverick,” declares Miller. “But a woman doing this is considered mad.”

May responds: “Women are not allowed to complain. If we do, we are whiny and hysterical.” She adds that “if a man messes up, he can shrug his shoulders, hum a little tune and walk away”. This is a reference to the resignation speech David Cameron made outside 10 Downing Street in June 2016.

Miller then says that “a lot of men hate me”; May responds with the same words, before adding, “But I have to keep going.”

Walker, a former Observer journalist who is now theatre critic for the New European, says that this is not “a Brexit play but an episode of Brexit captured in microcosm through a drama centring on two very driven women”.

Gina Miller was subjected to a tirade of racist abuse.


There is a third main character in the play: Paul Dacre, then the hugely powerful editor of the Daily Mail, who is the real villain of the piece. He opines: “Miller is a rich woman, who did not even come from here and yet she is trying to obfuscate the will of our people.” Dacre promises his support over Brexit to May, but warns her that she had better deliver.

The foul-mouthed Dacre rants to staff about “keep making the point that Miller is foreign-born. And use the most awful photos of her.”

Miller, at the receiving end of other abuse from the Mail including suggestions from some Brexiters that she “should be burned at the stake”, suffered even more from follow-up attacks online. “But I got nowhere complaining to the paper or the newspaper regulator.”

There is a key scene after the judges rule for Miller that parliament must have its say over leaving the EU. “This is the judges versus the people,” Dacre proclaims before demanding the now infamous “Enemies of the people” story, in which the Mail singled out the judiciary for defying its wishes. According to the play, this was a step too far for the Mail’s owner, Lord Rothermere, who, 18 months later, removed Dacre as editor.

As Miller puts it on stage: “Dacre set out to break me, but I broke him.”

Walker, who has known Miller for nearly a decade, did not tell her he was writing his play, although she has now read it – if only to check for factual errors. May’s office has also now been told about the drama, but has not responded.

“When May was up against Miller, she was already trapped by her own personality into not listening to some of the wise people in parliament,” argues the historian Anthony Seldon, who has penned a biography of May. “And yet May really knew Miller was right – all the more since she respected parliament. But she had also been influenced by the only other British female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, that ‘you don’t turn’ as it is a weakness. The irony was that Brexit was not something May hugely cared about though others in her party clearly did.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Massive Strikes in France Pressure Macron and New PM on Austerity Proposals
Trump Seeks Supreme Court Permission to Remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook
Hillary Clinton’s Reckless Rhetoric Fuels Division After Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
NASDAQ Rises to Record as Intel Soars More Than 20%, Nvidia Gains 3%
Nvidia’s $5 Billion Bet on Intel Reshapes AI Hardware Landscape
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Trump’s Quip on Biden and Google Lawsuit Revives Debate Over Antitrust Legacy
Macron and his wife to provide 'scientific photographic evidence' that she is a real woman
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
×