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Mike Leigh: Peterloo protesters would be ‘horrified’ by voter abstention

At the Mediterrane film festival in Malta, the film-maker spoke out against UK citizens ‘seeing justification in not voting’ in the general election

Mike Leigh has criticised UK voters considering abstention at this year’s general election, saying the subjects of his 2018 historical drama Peterloo would be appalled by such disengagement. Two years earlier, a mass petition to parliament for universal suffrage (for men) had been rejected by the House of Commons, despite attracting three-quarters of a million signatures. Speaking in Malta, Leigh said that his period movies, including Peterloo, Mr Turner (2014) and Topsy-Turvy (1999), were the “only times I’ve been able to get bigger budgets”.

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