Breunion Boys: The boy band trying to stop Brexit with washboard abs and cheesy tunes

This Dutch group may sound like a stunt but they have grabbed more attention than most activists in the bitter debate around Brexit, says Alex Marshall

The new face of diplomacy: the Dutch boy band (Marta Capilla)

The Breunion Boys – a Dutch boy band set up in response to Brexit – stand in their basement dressing room at Liverpool University doing final warmups for their first show in Britain.

The five members stare into one another’s eyes and kick their legs in time to orders from Flavia Faas, the band’s songwriter and dance coach. They try not to laugh as the exercises get quicker and quicker, so much so it is silly.

“This is what we came here for!” Faas shouts as the group finishes.

A few moments later, they take the stage at the “Rock for Europe” event. The audience in the student union hall is only about 60 people, and decades older than the crowd at a typical boy band gig. Most stand or sit at the back, looking tired after listening to hours of pro-EU speeches.

“We don’t bite,” says Joshua Alagbe, 24, one of the band’s members, encouraging people forward. “We just want to show the real love between Britain and Europe.”

The group then launches into a cover of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way”. “Ain’t nothing but a heartbreak,” they sing. “Ain’t nothing but a mistake.”

In the audience, David Murtagh, 69, a part-time roadside assistance coordinator, makes a face to show it isn’t his kind of music. “But I do like their shirts,” he says later.

The Breunion Boys may sound like a stunt, but the group has grabbed more attention than most activists in the bitter debate around Brexit, including from media that support the withdrawal. Since posting the clip for their debut song “Britain Come Back” online in December, they have appeared on daytime TV and in the tabloids.

The video for the song has also appeared on comedy TV shows, especially the part when Seyed Hosseini, 22, raps “look at what you leave behind” while showing his abs. (John Oliver showed it on HBO’s Last Week Tonight then called the band “a pretty solid argument for leaving the EU on any terms necessary”.)

The Liverpool show was billed as the first of a British tour, although the only other stop scheduled so far is in London on 29 March – the exit date.

Ab fab: the group’s Seyed Hosseini lifts up his shirt (Frederic Lambert)

The woman behind the group, Julia Veldman, 30, an animator from the Netherlands, says in an interview that she genuinely believes the Breunion Boys could have an impact. “I’m very sincere,” she says. “People have tried a lot of facts and arguments and they haven’t moved the debate one inch. So we can but try with emotion.”

“We know this is funny,” she adds. “But that’s the strength of it. There’s no light or air anywhere in the Brexit debate. Now people talk about us, and then we can say how we feel. We’re a bit like a Trojan horse.”

Veldman was living in New York when she heard the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum. “That was literally the first time I realised there were people who didn’t like the European Union, which is stupid of course,” she says.

She started crying when she heard the news, she says, adding, “We’ve had peace and opportunity in Europe for so long, and I don’t want to lose that.”

The idea of using a boy band to deliver her message came quickly, Veldman says. There is nothing more British than a boy band, she adds, mentioning groups Take That and One Direction.

“Being vulnerable and asking someone to reconsider can be pathetic,” she says. “But when it’s young boys who can dance and sing and are hot, it’s different.”

Finding guys who could do that as well as discuss the intricacies of Brexit was difficult, Veldman adds. Her search lasted a year. “There’s many people with political views,” she says. “They don’t all have sex appeal.”

Before the show in Liverpool, the group talked about sometimes feeling like a real boy band. They have several hardcore fans, they say, including a group of schoolgirls that regularly sends them drawings. But they also get online abuse – including death threats and accusations of being funded by Russia or George Soros, the financier who is often vilified by many on the far right. (“I wish,” Veldman says, laughing.)

But all the members insist they are doing this because they care about Brexit. Pablo Ramos, 25, the band’s best dancer and a hotel receptionist in Amsterdam, says he had been able to move to the Netherlands from Spain only because EU citizens have the right to live and work in any member country. “Why make a limit, a border between us?” he says.

The Breunion Boys have only two original songs. (The second, “The Real Deal,” features lyrics such as: “Oh, the treaties we have together/ No one’s going to treat you better”.) But more songs will emerge as Brexit unfolds, Veldman says. She wants the band to sing about the potential return of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, but is concerned about getting the right tone.

At the Liverpool show, it is clear that even if the Breunion Boys cannot change the course of Brexit, their efforts are entertaining. Within two songs, more than half the audience have moved near the stage. Most are swaying – and laughing – along.

Between numbers, the band ask the audience how they feel about Brexit. A student, who says he is originally from Germany, looks as if he is about to cry when he says he fears having to leave Britain. The boys jump down from the stage and hug him; the audience sigh.

But the biggest cheer comes a few minutes later, as the group finish “Britain Come Back”.

It comes just after Hosseini lifts his top and points to his abs.

© New York Times