The Sunday Telegraph - 01.09.2019

The Sunday Telegraph Sunday 1 September 2019 *** 25

Zoe Strimpel

I voted Remain –

but I’m glad the

Brexit ball is rolling

t’s increasingly hard to

picture the time before

the Brexit vote, which

now feels like a faraway

land of peace and

simplicity. A time in

which people chatted amicably at

dinner parties and barbecues and

could meet friends in the pub and not

get into a heated argument about

whether a coup had or had not taken

place in the United Kingdom. A time

when Jeremy Corbyn was just a fringe

loony-Left MP few had heard of.

I voted Remain, but three years on I

have changed my tune on Brexit.

Despite the plunge in the value of my

flat, I now want to leave. I want to

leave because, a) it has to be done and,

b) I just can’t take the stodge of

parliamentary deadlock any more.

Anything is better than what we

have been through in the last three

years – and my fellow Britons appear

to agree. A recent poll of 3,000 people

for Politico, the political website,

found that voters would rather leave

without a deal or revoke Article 50

altogether. In the East Midlands, 48

per cent wanted to go in do-or-die

fashion, 33 wanted to revoke and

remain, and only 5 per cent wanted a

further delay after Oct 31. In the North

West, 46 per cent wanted out without

a deal, 34 per cent wanted us to

revoke, and just 4 per cent could

stomach a further delay. In the Remain

stronghold of London, 53 per cent

wanted to revoke and just 9 per cent

will tolerate another delay.

All of which is why Boris’s

sensational move last week to

prorogue Parliament for an extra week

in October felt so right. So thrilling. So

new! We are finally, finally on the

move; to where we don’t quite know

yet, but at least it’s somewhere.

Of course it created bedlam.

Remainiacs and soft Brexiteers went

wild. They are always going wild, but

they went even wilder, if such a thing

is possible. Tories opposed to a hard

Brexit hustled furiously to stop Boris

with a Bill to outlaw no deal without

Parliament’s backing. Ruth Davidson,

the Scottish Tory leader, resigned.

Nearly 1.5 million people signed a

petition to stop prorogation. Hugh

Grant launched a spectacular rant on

Twitter branding Boris “an over-

promoted rubber bath toy”, among

other things that I won’t repeat.

The Speaker of the House, John

Bercow, took time out from his holiday

to storm about “constitutional

outrage”. Commentators talked of a

“civil war state of mind” and the

“trashing of our democracy”. There

was endless frothing about

unconstitutionality, dictatorship-style

behaviour and bundling Europeans off

in boats.

Despite feeling jittery about a

no-deal departure, I found the

ferocious, obsessive and extreme

response to prorogation bizarre. Aren’t

they tired of all this? Perhaps they are

masochists (or sadists?). Perhaps they

secretly enjoy the process that has

seen the results of the Brexit

referendum grindingly passed through

the hands of politicians, tortured and

mauled and rehashed endlessly. To

them there is always a better fudge

over the horizon.

But if there’s one thing the past

three years have taught us, it is that

Brexit can’t really be fudged. Watching

Theresa May try to please everyone,

including the almost hilariously

obstructive EU, demonstrated this

with agonising clarity. So after the

endless looping purgatory of her

Brexit strategy, Boris’s sharp and

decisive action has provided a real

psychological balm. We’ve been taken

by the scruff of our necks and dunked

in freezing cold water. It’s a shock, but

it’s also invigorating.

It might also wake us up and,

weirdly, when everyone has calmed

down a bit, cheer us up. Brexit fatigue

is a well-documented phenomenon.

The deadlock has been bad for the

nation’s mood. Deliver Brexit and we

might regain a spring in our step.

A YouGov poll in June found a third

of Britons were avoiding the news

“due to frustration over the intractable

and polarising nature” of Brexit.

That sense of the intractable has

wearied us, and Boris, whatever you

make of his tactics, is at last bursting

through it. Had you told us this was in

store for Britain three years ago,

Remain voters like me would have had

a meltdown. Now, isn’t it strange that

now we’re just grateful that something

is finally happening?

Read more

telegraph.co.uk/

opinion

Twitter

@zstrimpel

A

nother week, another study

showing the benefits of fasting

diets. The most recent, from the

University of Graz in Austria, suggests

that cutting down to little or no food

every other day lowers cholesterol

levels, improves the heart and

prolongs life expectancy. But the

fasting researchers are now preaching

to the converted, for intermittent

starvation has become the number

Fasting is one

food fad

that works

I

PLANET PHOTOS

L

ast week I managed to

hustle my way into the

celeb-studded West End

press night of Fleabag,

wunderkind Phoebe Waller-

Bridge’s live one-woman show.

Having first seen it on stage

several years ago, and devoured

its two-season outing on BBC

One, I worried – as she began

with the familiar scene at a job

interview from hell – that I’d

actually be bored. Like much of

Britain, I know the Fleabag

story well, a tragicomic tale a

young London woman’s failure

to reconcile her urge for love

with her need for wild, constant

and destructive sex.

But I was – once again –

seduced. Seduced partly by

Waller Bridge’s pitch-perfect

intensity and her miraculous

comic timing. But seduced

mostly by her absolutely

no-holds-barred depiction of

female desire and the great

darkness it can involve. I found

myself seeing with new clarity

how shocking and therefore

how truly revolutionary such

desire is. Fleabag’s obsession

with and need for sex is both

funny and deadly serious.

It is curiously discomfiting to

watch this woman’s desperate,

promiscuous, pest-like

behaviour. When Fleabag

describes wrenching off her

clothes in front of a bewildered

older male customer, grabbing

his arm and taunting him about

his response (he shields his

eyes), the audience

doesn’t quite know

how to respond. Is it

funny because it’s a

woman doing that to

a man rather than

vice versa? If so, isn’t

that a bit worrying?

One of the ironies of

MeToo was that it

reinstalled the

age-old narrative

about the

dynamics of

sexual need: men

have it, and

aggress

accordingly,

while women

are constantly

their victims,

rather than the sexual agents. I,

therefore, found myself

relishing the seriousness of

Waller-Bridge’s portrayal of

Fleabag’s extremely intense and

proactive relationship to sex

• sex at all costs, including at
  the expense of friends and
  family. “There isn’t anything
  worse than someone who
  doesn’t want to f--- me.”
  More comically, but still
  darkly, she muses: “I’m not
  obsessed with sex, I just can’t
  stop thinking about it. The
  performance of it. The
  awkwardness of it. The drama
  of it. The moment you realise
  someone wants your body ...
  not so much the feeling of it.”
  This garners waves of
  laughter, no doubt, because it is
  terribly true and terribly
  human. I am sure most women
  have a less intense and
  self-destructive
  relationship to sex than
  Fleabag. But our need for
  sexual intimacy is real
  and it can be tormenting.
  Crucially, as the brilliant
  Waller-Bridge captures,
  women’s sexual
  desire is about
  much, much
  more than
  being on the
  receiving end.

All hail Jude Law’s return

as the Pope in pants

Women’s need for

sexual intimacy is real,

however tormenting

End the circus:

Britons are fed up

with a Brexit

debate that

reached fever pitch

after Boris Johnson

announced the

prorogation of

Parliament

We are finally on the

move; to where we

don’t yet know, but at

least it’s somewhere

Seductive:

Phoebe Waller-

Bridge’s Fleabag

has become a

sensation

KIRSTY O’CONNOR/PA WIRE

Still got it: Jude

Law in the trailer

for The New Pope

Who above the

age of 30 hasn’t

swooned over a

young Jude

Law? What a

nice treat to be

reminded that at

46, the actor has

still got it. Law

was the star of

the strange but

beguiling 2016

TV drama The

Young Pope, in

which he played

an egomaniacal,

emotionally

troubled (and

American) Pope

Pius XIII, and

was dressed

mostly in white

papal garb.

Last week, he

reconnected – or

allowed his lusty

fans to

reconnect – with

his heart-throb

skills in a

promotion for

the next

instalment,

called The New

Pope, also

starring John

Malkovich as

Giovanni Paolo

III. The teaser

saw Jude strut

slowly and

arrogantly on a

beach through a

throng of

swooning,

bikini-clad

babes. The papal

gown was

nowhere to be

seen: instead

there was

nothing but a

very small pair

of white briefs

and a very sly,

sexy wink at the

camera that

said: “Hello

ladies.” We say

hello back.

one diet of our times. Fans include

Benedict Cumberbatch, Beyoncé and

Nicole Kidman, and a vast swathe of

Silicon Valley executives. You can do

“calorie cycling” (calorie restriction

every other day), the 5:2 (eating only

600 calories twice a week), the

12-hour (where you don’t eat for 12

hours a day) or the 16:8 (eating only

within an eight-hour period).

If ever anything sounded faddish

it’s this. And yet... I am a convert.

Fasting might be the first diet whose

rapid weight loss has effected a

genuine and profound physical boost.

I remember a few years ago my

extremely sceptical scientist mother

sent me a lengthy article by a doctor

outlining his views on longevity.

Over a long career he had come to

believe that severe calorie restriction

was the best way to extend life

because it allows cells to repair and

renew. I was convinced, and for the

past couple of years have fasted

whenever I feel the need – about

once to twice a week.

It’s a real bore. Nothing is duller

than an evening without a proper

dinner. But I always feel better for it.

Always.

It sounds awful: here we are, fat

and unhealthy after millennia of

battles with the most terrible hunger.

That we are such victims to plenty

that we must reimpose the conditions

of much darker times is a bit

perverse. Yet the wonderful thing

about today is that, through

controlled fasting, we can finally

have our cake and eat it: deprivation

in the knowledge of plenty to come.

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