I’m very depressed by the political muddle we are in: Jeremy Irons

Jeremy Irons, the Academy Award-winning actor was in town. The British actor, who has always been vocal about social issues, spoke about Brexit in a candid chat with us.

“I’m very depressed by the political muddle we are in,” he said. While elaborating the referendum of Brexit, he added, “In all the forms of vote to be democratic, the voters must be informed. Otherwise, it is not

democracy

. It is populism. Now, some of us, who are reading and following the debates, I think to make up for the first referendum, we should have a confirmatory vote.”

When asked about democracy, he said, “I think there has to be local assemblies (governance). I think the decisions have to begin from grassroots and go up. That would revitalise democracy. But democracy is a very strange thing, because in England, we have one vote in every five years and maybe 30-40% people vote. And we say that’s democracy. Well, it doesn’t need everybody to take part in the decision making. We have a government for that. We elect politicians and we hope they will govern us to our interest. Governments need strong economies, so that they can raise tax to pay for the infrastructure. In order to have that, they have to encourage large, commercial economic aspects which are run by big corporations. To do that, they forget to a certain extent the will of people. It is a very difficult balance. It has always been like that. I think we need to ask these large corporations to pay taxes. The profits they are making should go back to the interest of the society. I think that is going wrong, with a few loopholes.”