Eddie Izzard brings Stand Up for Europe campaign to Warwick

On Wednesday 8 June, comedian Eddie Izzard spoke at the University of Warwick on behalf of Stand Up for Europe, a national campaign which aims to encourage young people to vote Remain in the upcoming EU Referendum

In advance of his tour, which will see Eddie visiting 31 universities in 31 days, Eddie’s website stated that he “is proud to be a British European and strongly believes that Britain should fight for our right to remain in the EU”.

Interest for the event was so great that Eddie’s speech – in which he also answered audience questions – was screened live on the piazza.

Eddie’s speech opened by asking the audience to perform a task: search for ‘photos of European cities’ on their mobile phones. This seemingly simple web search allowed Eddie to propose a light-hearted reason to remain in the European Union: low cost flights to many beautiful European cities.

“Europe was designed to make peace take root. If we run away and hide from it, that’s never going to work.”

What followed was an anecdote describing a visit to a Greek island in his late twenties, which fuelled his passion for Europe.

He told the audience: “[Europe] was designed to make peace take root. If we run away and hide from it, that’s never going to work.”

Combining fact with a humorous interactive style, Eddie fluidly made references to the benefits of the United Kingdom’s EU membership throughout his speech, including worker’s rights, maternity leave, holiday pay, the ERASMUS scheme and crucially for his audience, the billion pound funding that comes into universities from the European Union.

Discussing Brexit, the Remain campaign’s opposition, he said: “The arguments for people coming together are more complex than the arguments for pulling people apart.”

“On the Brexit side, they’re not even talking about economics. They’re just arguing immigration, immigration, immigration…”

“The arguments for people coming together are more complex than the arguments for pulling people apart.”

He stressed that remaining in the EU is crucial to Britain’s influence in shaping the future: “Whatever future we’re going into, we want to be on the inside, building it, making it better. Not sitting on the outside.”

Closing his speech, Eddie stated: “On the 23rd, forget all the number crunching, it’s all about humanity. If people are despairing, despair is the fuel of terrorism; hope is the fuel of civilisation. We’ve got to put hope into the world. That’s what the European Union is.”