Why YOU are leaving Britain

Or at least thinking about it

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Let me start by saying thank you for all your messages in response to my first Leaving Britain post last week! I had a hunch that this topic might resonate with a few people. So I am both glad and, I suppose, a bit saddened that it does.

It has been particularly interesting reading the stories you’ve been sharing in the comments:

• A fellow British media colleague in Dubai who wrote that Brexit was “the last straw” for him, causing him to leave the UK the following year. He says he now frequently gets contacted by previously-sceptical friends interested in doing the same.

• A reader who left Britain in 2010 for Cape Town, describing himself as “lucky enough to return to the UK two or three times a year and, over the last eight or nine years I have increasingly realised it was the best move; I am afraid Britain has lost its identity, and it seems the cost of living is getting out of control.”

• A comment from a former investment colleague who also left the UK after Brexit. He moved to New Zealand with his family and says that while he still visits and loves London, his new home is “quieter and remote, folks are less angry and more likely to find answers somewhere in the middle and we get to watch the recurring rolling chaos from a safe distance.”

• A similar comment from a reader who left Britain 34 years ago “not because of any misgivings [she] had about London," where she “lived and loved” at the time, but because she got a good job opportunity in Munich and a chance to improve her German skills. She has now acquired German citizenship “because of Brexit” (notice a theme) and although she has a “distinct yearning for the UK… the thought of trying to access basic health care, the general dereliction of so many public institutions, and the ghastly “culture wars” (the trans issues being just one) really do cause me to wonder whether I ever will move back.”

There was also a collection of messages from parents:

• An instagram follower who said his son went to Australia last year and “doesn’t want to come back - and I don’t want him to. He has a better future there. I don’t blame him. [The UK] is not the country I grew up in, it’s gone.”

• A private message from a reader who said he is “well past [his] mid-30s” and owns a house “and it's too late to leave. But I have told my daughters that there may be better places to live… The problem with Britain, in a nutshell, is that there are very few people who care about responsible wealth creation.”

• Another father wrote in the comment section: “I totally understand the feeling to live outside these shores, it is something that I have wrestled with increasingly over the last 5-6 years. Both my wife and I would like to move to Dubai in the next 5 years. We have a young daughter and feel that for her growth into a young woman that the UK is not currently the best place for her… to grow as a person, educationally, aspirationally. Probably the biggest issue is the lack of hope. I can’t see any real change within a generation for this country due to so many complex factors that have their roots in decisions taken decades ago and that adds to our desire for change. Not to mention the weather too!”

I also received quite a few questions about my decision to return to Dubai in particular. I will absolutely be writing a piece about that in the coming months...

But your responses got me thinking. While I have so much to say on this topic, your stories are the most interesting part for me. Each one is unique, but also often overlapping. A fascinating way to populate a proper human picture of what’s really going on, and to provide some meat for debate - and perhaps even change - back home.

So, from now on, each piece I publish on Leaving Britain will now also contain an interview with you. Or someone like you. Someone who has left Britain, or is thinking of leaving, or perhaps even left and then returned. Not a clickbait headline about a billionaire exodus, or a Brits-in-Dubai hit job (we all have far too much access to the Mail Online). Just a real person sharing their real story. It will be interesting. And fun! I promise.

If you are tempted to share your story about Leaving Britain (either considering leaving, are leaving, have left, or perhaps left and returned) please send me a message. You can be anonymous - or not - that is entirely up to you. I will call or message you with some basic questions, whatever works best. We will have a nice chat, and then I will write and share your story here. Allowing you to contribute to a small, living, public record about this ongoing trend. Just hit this button!:

Before you leave…

Of course I still have plenty of my own thoughts. So this section is where I will regularly share any relevant tidbits that have caught my attention recently.

This week, a comment from a fellow British journalist:

“I thought the most telling thing at the last Sunak vs Starmer debate [ahead of last year’s General Election] was when the young woman got up and said she has friends who are leaving. I thought: that’s the first time emigration has been on the agenda in this country in decades.”

That got me thinking about emigration patterns, and wondering when the last properly big exodus actually happened. The answer is (of course): in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, from 1945 onwards. I then found this interesting blog post about that ‘Last Great Exodus’ which argues:

‘[Comparatively] little attention has been given to the mass exodus of young British emigrants desperate to depart Britain’s war-torn shores. In the years after the war more than 2 million people emigrated from the United Kingdom. Such was the scale of population loss that wartime leader Winston Churchill feared those leaving would hamper post-war recovery. He issued a patriotic appeal on the BBC:

“I say to those that wish to leave our country, Stay here and fight it out. If we work together with brains and courage, as we did in days not long ago, we can make our country fit for all our people. Do not desert the old land.”

This was a battle Churchill was destined to lose and his feelings were made palpably clear when he described emigrants as “rats leaving a sinking ship.”

…Plenty to think about there, hey.

What’s more: I found that blog post on the Migration Museum website, which has the following stated aim:

“To develop a museum about emigration as much as about immigration, and for two main reasons. The first is that, until the 1980s, Great Britain was a net exporter of people – more people left the country than came into it – and emigration has been a core part of our history for thousands of years. And the second is that every immigrant into a country is, of course, an emigrant from another – but, when people talk about migration, the focus tends always to be, unevenly, on the impact of immigration rather than that of emigration.”

I’ll get my coat.

See you, and your stories, next time.