Brexit Will Make Poor Poorer Warns Film-Maker Ken Loach
Wages in Britain will be pushed down by Brexit and ordinary people will pay the price of the country's departure from the EU, film-maker Ken Loach warned Friday.
The left-wing director, whose moving drama "I, Daniel Blake" about the human cost of austerity opens across Europe next week, predicted a flight of capital from the UK.
Loach said life would get even bleaker for the type of strivers featured in his movie, which won him the Cannes film festival's top prize the Palme d'Or for a second time in May.
"Politicians will want to attract more investment to Britain to replace that" which will be lost because of Brexit, he told reporters in Paris.
"The only way they can do that is by having cheap labor. So unemployment will again drive down the value of labor. As Lenin -- who are not allowed to quote anymore -- once said, 'The ruling class can survive every crisis, provided that the working class pays the price.'"
Loach had urged voters to stay with Europe in the country's June referendum despite condemning the bloc as a "neo-liberal project."
"A lot of industries will move because they want to be in the EU, to have access to the market," he added.
Loach's producer Rebecca O'Brien told AFP that Brexit would be "disastrous" for the British film industry.
The veteran director echoed her fears, telling reporters that although they "were not very much", European funds for filmmaking would be missed.
More importantly, he said, the co-production deals on which the industry relies "depend on the free movement of labor. If that stops, that would be bad. And it will force producers of British films to look across the Atlantic -- they won't look across the Channel. And this will make it worse."
Loach, 80, said the re-election of British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn offered some hope despite the fact that he is a lifelong euroskeptic.
"More than 400,000 people have joined the Labor Party because of him and it's now the biggest party in Europe. Yet the mainstream media is saying, 'You can't vote for him because he's unelectable.' But clearly that's not true because people are supporting him."
Source: Agence France Presse
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