Elena Ferrante on Brexit. ‘Staying together is an obligation’

We don’t know who she is, yet Elena Ferrante  has recently called on the audience for Brexit. The Guardian published on 4 June 2016 nine letters addressed to Britain and written by leading authors and thinkers from EU countries, such as Ferrante, one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year, the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis and the French comics artist and director Riad Sattouf,  where they strongly recommed Britons to vote ‘stay’.

‘Dear Britain,
I don’t have much sympathy for the current European Union’.  This is the incipit of Ferrante’s letter to Britain. Her words are elegantly decorated and provisions are abundant […] Behind its facade, it safeguards the interests of those countries that are strongest, both economically and militarily.

‘And yet, despite the rules and regulations, it has never stopped thinking that – when there is nothing further to be gained – it is best to throw off the union and make do with the old cocksure ways of the proud old nations’.

A few lines later Ferrante without any euphemisms explains why ‘it is necessary, in my opinion, to stay together at all costs’.

We have to stay together to face migration, climate change, global terrorism and major financial crises. She urges for a ‘community that instead of drawing up lists of objectives becomes actively political and puts an end to countless intolerable inequalities’.

In her emotional letter she adds that we don’t need roots now. We became splendid plants, but ‘bound to the ground, and nowadays everything is more mobile than ever, shifting quickly from one shape to the next’.

Time is running out and there are many problematic issues to face. ‘Staying together is no longer an option but an obligation and an urgent necessity’.