Alison Poltock of the East End Film Festival writes for Europe

I've just received this post from Alison Poltock, the Director of the East End Film Festival which opens today, June 23rd, 2016.

I can’t sleep. The festival kicks off in 4 days, but all I can think about is the fact that Thursday 23 June is going to go down in history, and not because it’s the opening night of the East End Film Festival, sadly.

A newsletter just popped into my email from a healthfood shop. It was a plea from the owners to vote Leave. It had some interesting points about the EU health directives, restrictions on drug trials, TTIP….

But the trouble is, all these discussions have become rather moot for me now. The debate has become polarized to such an extent that it reminds me of a journey back from a football match some years ago where my team were on one platform shouting “Watford” and the other team were on the opposite platform shouting “Chelsea”. It just went on a bit too long until you could see everyone starting to think ‘this is a bit embarrassing, we’d better add some words’ – but instead they decided to just shout the same one word, louder, with more menace and add a weird lunging movement.

The Leave campaign bleat that they’re not racist, but actually for all the chichi chitter chatter about trade and the economy (where it seems the only consensus is that NOBODY KNOWS what’s going to happen), unfortunately the ‘Freedom to control our National Borders’ is the main reason that people want to leave. The rhetoric is all about protecting our national identity, like it’s some kind of deified Toby Jug.

If you look at the Better Off Out campaign, It lays out a whole list of ‘freedoms’ that Leaving the EU will supposedly afford us: ‘Freedom to make major savings for British Consumers’ (in other words, to fuck-over workers rights), Freedom to restore Britain’s special Legal System (fuck over human rights), Freedom to save the NHS from EU threats…’(fuck the NHS).

I’m not a proponent of the EU - it’s an unelected organisation based on neoliberal ideology, but Leaving isn’t going to throw us into some kind of ambrosial orgy of socialist democracy, it’s going to throw us into a 3-way with Johnson, Gove and Murdoch with all the horror that entails.

To be honest, any nuance in the argument has disappeared for me. I instinctively thought we should remain before researching in any detail. And since then, any Lexit arguments seem marginal and pointless coz Leaving has come to mean only one thing: the rise of ugly nationalism.

If anyone can tell me how Brexit will make us more loving and tolerant to our neighbours, then I want to hear it. But no one can, that’s already become clear. I just hope that there’s enough people out there as horrified by this poisonous xenophobia as I am – and that they’ll get out and vote before things get any worse. So whilst I have some sympathy with a couple of the anti-EU points – ultimately, if we don’t want the haters to win, there’s only one way to vote: ‪#‎VoteRemain‬

Alison Poltock
Director | East End Film Festival

Mob: +44 (0)7973 836474
email: alison@eastendfilmfestival.com
web: www.eastendfilmfestival.com

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