Michael Moore: ‘Britain Is A Toxic Place’
Oscar-winning director Michael Moore has slammed British politics for turning the country into “a toxic place” to live.
Citing Tony Blair’s decision to join the United States in declaring war on Iraq, alleged attempts to privatize Britain’s National Health Service and the country’s impending referendum on E.U. membership, the Bowling for Columbine director said that Britain’s international credibility had plummeted over the course of the last decade.
As a result, Moore said he refused to travel to Britain as part of his latest film, Where to Invade Next, which focuses on lessons the U.S. can draw from other successful nations across the globe in order to improve American society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly4_QiXv8es
“We wanted to go to countries where we thought we could learn something. It was a conscious and purposeful decision to not come to the UK,” he told reporters at The Evening Standard on Friday.
“We didn’t feel like there was anything left to learn here. And that you had given up on yourselves.”
According to the 62-year-old director, Britain let its moral compass slip the moment former Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed to back George W. Bush and his 2003 invasion of Iraq.
And although Blair’s political party is no longer in power, Moore said that the rest of the world had not yet gotten over the damages the U.K. Government had inflicted upon the Middle East.
Moore was also quick to add that the country’s more recent political decisions hadn’t improved Britain’s global standing, either.
“We’re not quite over the damages that the country has done to the world. This is a toxic place,” he said. “This is a place that wants to put young adults in debt, a place that wants to create a two-tier medical system, has elected a conservative government and now wants to leave the European Union.”
British voters are currently embroiled in a bitter divide over the nation’s perceived relationship with Europe.
Immigration fears and concerns over the potential cultural ramifications of the E.U.’s new Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the United States have given way to an unprecedented level of Euro-skepticism across the country.
As a result, voters are set to decide whether Britain should simply pull out of the single market altogether by way of a public referendum on June 23.
Although Michael Moore fell short of telling the British public how he believed they should vote on June 23, he did issue a stern appeal for the country to do a bit of soul searching in order to rediscover its true cultural identity.
“I hope I’m not sounding offensive by saying this,” he said. “It’s a plea for you to be Britain – what we know of the greatness that you’ve done, and the good ideas that you’ve come up with.”
That being said, Moore didn’t simply limit his harsh take on the current global state of affairs to Britain.
He also spoke of America’s impending general election and argued that Hillary Clinton would find it exceedingly difficult to overcome Donald Trump and the presumed GOP nominee’s “propaganda” machine when voters hit the polls in November.
“The manipulation, the propaganda and the way he’s doing it is just brilliant, in the sense that he has succeeded,” Moore said of Trump. “Seventeen other candidates couldn’t find a way to bring him down. And now Hillary Clinton is trying to do the same thing using logic and brains. It’s going to require something else. Personally I hope satire brings Donald Trump down.”
[Photo by Thos Robinson/Getty Images for Producers Guild of America]
