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Brexit fuels brain drain as skilled Britons head to the EU

85 points by BerislavLopac 6y ago

Animats 6y ago
Brexit hasn't really hit the UK yet. That happens at the end of 2020.
- jgrahamc 6y ago
  Whilst technically true Brexit has been happening since 2016, and people and companies have been making decisions based on it.
  - growlist 6y ago
    The economy held up pretty well, all things considered, and apparently much to the chagrin of the prophets of doom (not saying you are one or anything).
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      Wouldn't we expect the bulk of the economic effects to hit at the end of the year (when the transition agreement expires)?
      - growlist 6y ago
        Remember when we were told by George Osborne there would be an immediate recession the day after a Leave vote? Edit: 'Brexit could plunge Britain into an instant recession, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have said in the starkest economic warning yet of the consequences of Britain leaving the European Union.' 'he Treasury said unemployment would be 520,000 higher, wages 2.8 per cent lower and house prices 10 per cent down. In a severe shock joblessness would be 820,000 higher, wages down by 4 per cent and house prices 18 per cent lower.' https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-to-create-instant-diy-recession-warns-george-osborne-a7042886.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-to-c... Edit: downvoting facts now? ok HN.
        nicoburns 6y ago
        As I said in my original comment: wouldn't you expect the majority of the economic effects to hit after the economic situation changes? i.e. when British companies are suddenly subject to tariffs when exporting to Europe at the end of the year. The fact that George Osbourne said that they would happen immediately is neither here nor there really.
        dnh44 6y ago
        The pound dropped a lot after the vote and it still hasn't recovered. That helps UK exporters a lot but it was still a pretty dramatic change. But I don't see how one asshole being wrong is evidence that Brexit is going to be a good thing.
        mnm1 6y ago
        Are you saying the UK is not currently in a recession where it has been since at least February/March?
    - nondave 6y ago
      I'm not sure we can come to any real conclusions about the economic impacts of it until we get well into 2021, even if many businesses have been preparing for it.
      - growlist 6y ago
        ? so you also dispute the parent to my comment then: > Whilst technically true Brexit has been happening since 2016, and people and companies have been making decisions based on it.
        nondave 6y ago
        I don't disagree that it's _been happening_, i.e. some of its effects have happened already and continue to do so, but I wouldn't want to say "done and dusted, economy's fine" until it's properly happened and we're into 2021.
        nicoburns 6y ago
        Companies have been making decisions based on the potential future changes to their economic position. But their economic position hasn't actually changed yet. For many smaller companies there's not actually much they can do to prepare. They're just going to have to deal with the fallout when it happens. It seems to me that a lot of companies have gone with a "let's just carry on with business as usual while we still can" approach, and that they are going to get hit really badly when their product suddenly costs 20% more for a large proportiom of their customers.
        dnh44 6y ago
        That's pretty much been our position exactly. Preparing is even more difficult because the final terms of Brexit are still undecided so we don't know what to prepare for. Preparing for the worst possible outcome for me would mean relocating everything (both business and family) to the EU except for staff, whom would no longer have jobs. This is obviously an ass-ache so I'm not going to do that unless I have to. On the other hand living somewhere with better weather could be nice so I'll take things as they come.
    - mpweiher 6y ago
      Hmm...that "all things considered" is doing a lot of work here. Although the UK officially left in January of this year, we're still in the transition period, so none of the actual Brexit effects have happened yet, only anticipatory ones. So this is kinda like saying the fall off the cliff hasn't really been bad "so far" while still standing on top of said cliff. And yet, the £ is at all time lows and the cost so far has already been $170 billion, with another $70 billion by the end of the year. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/-170-billion-and-counting-the-cost-of-brexit-for-the-u-k https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/-170-bill...
      - growlist 6y ago
        Ah come on - the general consensus was that the performance of the UK economy was far better than the prophets of doom (of which there were plenty) had forecasted. Don't change the goalposts now.
        mpweiher 6y ago
        "Consensus" among who? The UK has been lagging: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2019/03/22/uk-economy-since-the-brexit-vote-slower-gdp-growth-lower-productivity-and-a-weaker-pound/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2019/03/22/uk-economy-sin... "Relative to G7 countries, however, the UK has slipped from having the highest growth rate in the G7 before the vote, to the lowest now (OBR 2018)" "Productivity has also suffered. " "The sterling has depreciated and increased costs." "Purchasing power has gone down." "Finally, both inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) have dropped since the referendum." --- https://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-will-cost-uk-more-than-total-payments-to-eu-2020-1?r=DE&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-will-cost-uk-more-tha... "Brexit will have soon cost the UK more than all its payments to the EU over the past 47 years put together" --- https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/12/02/three-years-on-the-uk-is-paying-a-high-economic-price-for-its-decision-to-leave-the-eu/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/12/02/three-years-on-the... "Three years on: the UK is paying a high economic price for its decision to leave the EU" "While the UK started with a steeper growth trajectory, it has fallen behind other G7 countries since the referendum " "Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose dramatically from 0.4 percent in June 2016 to 3 percent in January 2018. " "Real wages dropped from a pre-referendum annual growth rate of 1.1% to less than 0.1% after the referendum" -- And not sure what you mean by "changing goalposts". Surely you agree that the effects of Brexit will primarily come into effect after Brexit has happened?
    - dnh44 6y ago
      The prophets of doom may yet have their moment in the sun considering that no laws have changed yet. And no one knows what the actual rules are going to be come 1/1/2021. In my personal circumstances my business makes most of it's sales to the EU and if things happen like they look like might happen I'm going to be contractually forced to lower prices to compensate for any customs duty my customers will have to pay. Additionally I'll have to spend several more hours per week just to make customs documents, or hire someone to do it for me. So I'm still really hoping the customs union will remain intact.
      - Animats 6y ago
        And no one knows what the actual rules are going to be come 1/1/2021. Right. There's still no deal between the UK and the EU. The UK still wants many of the benefits of being in the EU without submitting to the EU's trade rules.[1] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/brexit-uk-trade-deal-unlikely-for-now-says-eu.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/brexit-uk-trade-deal-unlikel...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
LatteLazy 6y ago
One of the reasons this is important is that it's quite hard to get a visa for many EU Countries. If Germany opened a skilled\tech\finance visa program, you'd easily see double the current number. I'm not sure whether they've held off because they don't want to do it or as a show of goodwill for the "negotiations" but they would be doing themselves and many decent people a favour if they pulled the trigger. Brexiteers won't be reasoned with and being reasonable is seen as weakness by them.
- bjornsing 6y ago
  > Brexiteers won't be reasoned with and being reasonable is seen as weakness by them. This “reasonableness is weakness” thing seems to be a more and more clear trend in western culture... It’s quite disturbing and seems very dangerous to me. Or is it something that’s been circulating for a long time, just that I haven’t noticed?
  - Sambdala 6y ago
    It's the 'movie' version of negotiating that plays to a populist crowd. It intersects with other 'tough guy' identity tropes that are being (successfully) used in domestic political battles to gain power, and then are repositioned to be used in foreign relations with predictably terrible outcomes. The problem is the audience of the negotiating stance isn't the counterparty, it's the domestic base who elected you because they were fed up with nuance and are suspicious of the counterparty. This isn't just a Brexit problem, but is much more widespread. I don't know how you'd be able to align incentives any worse.
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      > It's the 'movie' version of negotiating that plays to a populist crowd. See also: "the art of the deal" > The problem is the audience of the negotiating stance isn't the counterparty, it's the domestic base who elected you because they were fed up with nuance and are suspicious of the counterparty. Not just the nuance, but the lack of dramatic change, a handful of examples of bad behavior by the party of nuance being equally corrupt or useless, and a constant stream of propaganda highlighting that.
pjc50 6y ago
See previously https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/26/number-britons-going-to-europe-at-10-year-high https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/26/number-brit... The article is however quite bad at distinguishing between: - British nationals moving their place of residence from the UK to the EU - British nationals already resident in the EU changing their nationality so they can stay there after free movement is taken away from them And doesn't mention the third category: EU nationals normally resident in the UK deciding to return, and whether being deemed ineligable for "settled status" or indefinite leave to remain is a factor in that. People who I have spoken to about this tend to be pragmatic; even a damaged UK provides more economic and social freedom than many parts of eastern Europe. Especially compared to rapidly de-liberalising Poland. However, we've yet to see how badly the government copes with the end of the transition period.
- scaryclam 6y ago
  It also appears to omit that a lot of skilled workers from EU countries are doing the exact same but in reverse. I always liked the Guardian, but their stories on brexit have been terrible, to the point that you can't trust them at all.
  - bennysonething 6y ago
    Yep, nearly everyone on my team is from outside UK. Mostly EU, brexit hasn't affected them at all.
    - moystard 6y ago
      That's not my experience; a lot of friends and colleagues have left the UK to go back to the EU since the referendum vote. Also, in terms of recruitment, very few people are now interested in coming over to the UK for engineering positions. We used to have a lot of talented candidates from EU countries (especially Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, etc.); we have not had a single applicant from these countries since the vote.
    - s1t5 6y ago
fxtentacle 6y ago
Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London, to avoid the risk of being cut off from most of their customers. But now if your employer changes from being an UK to a German company, then suddenly that means that they might not be able to keep employing you, thanks to "your" British politicians trying to keep a hard stance against cross border employment. So then suddenly your choices are: - keep your passport, but you'll likely lose your job and be forced to move out of your house - change your passport and keep your job and your house To me, that explains why now so many Britons choose option B. The article doesn't really explain it, but many of those asking for a passport now are already living in Germany, so they merely want to stay where they are. And as someone living in Germany, I'd like to add that the government handling of Covid, unemployment support, and free access to healthcare will really sweeten the deal. Would you want to move from Berlin (almost no restrictions apart from wearing face masks) to London at this time?
- Nursie 6y ago
  > Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London Which ones have done this? IIRC JPMC have increased their office capacity in Ireland, but I haven't heard of multiple banks moving headquarters (though I heard lots of rumours that they would)
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    This seems to still not be settled. Hard to distinguish banks pressuring governments via threats to leave from banks actually leaving, still. https://www.americanbanker.com/articles/banks-are-ditching-london-offices-and-not-just-because-of-covid-19 https://www.americanbanker.com/articles/banks-are-ditching-l... > In the coming months alone, Barclays may ditch its investment bank's headquarters in the capital; Credit Suisse is offloading nine floors of office space; and Morgan Stanley is reviewing its entire London footprint.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      Seems a mixture of speculation, downsizing of workforce and office space due to coronavirus, and all sorts of other things. I don't think that supports the idea that "Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London"
michaelt 6y ago
> In the four years since the Brexit referendum, 31,600 Brits have been granted dual British/German citizenship: 2019 saw 14,600 naturalisations compared to 622 in 2015. While I agree there's cause for concern in general, a fair portion of these are people's citizenship catching up with where they've built their lives. After all, pre-Brexit you could have lived in Germany since childhood, been educated there, got a job, got married to a German and started a family of German kids - all while holding a UK passport yourself. For someone in that situation, Brexit makes getting that German citizenship a lot more urgent.
- readarticle 6y ago
  Precisely. Until they begin moving for purely economic reasons rather than personal/political, it’ll continue resembling the USA -> CAN trickle, not the deluge the other way around. EU -> UK numbers should prove interesting.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Well, the numbers for Western Europeans should decline because a lot of people won't bother anymore, considering the harsher residence requirements and the numbers for Eastern Europeans will go down because in many cases they won't even qualify for visas at all (just like they don't qualify for US visas now, in many cases). The real question is: will blocking this immigration also make the powers that be redistribute wealth more to the poor natives? Time will tell :-)
- jashmatthews 6y ago
  Nobody's getting chucked out if they decide to stay on British citizenship and permanent residence. People are taking citizenship now because if they wait they'll be required to renounce their British citizenship to naturalize.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    That, and they want the ability to travel to other EU countries a German passport would guarantee them - rather than waiting for the uncertain results of negotiations by the pro-brexit UK government.
m0zg 6y ago
Wouldn't it make sense, as a part of the same study, to answer the question of how many EU citizens are getting the _UK_ citizenship? The fact that this is not even discussed suggests that the study is designed to confirm an underlying agenda.
growlist 6y ago
Surely this is nothing to worry about, given that (according to the Guardian's worldview) we have hundreds of doctors, engineers and scientists arriving at the coast of Kent by dinghy every day. You wonder why the French let them leave!
- DanBC 6y ago
  That isn't the Guardian worldview. They're saying there are a small number of healthcare professionals arriving as asylum seekers, and that it makes no sense to prevent those people from working especially during the worst pandemic the world has seen for many years.
  - growlist 6y ago
    Come on now - the howls of outrage from the Guardian et al would be incessant were the UK to introduce policies that were properly deterrent to illegal immigration. The left is desperate for immigration of all kinds, legal and illegal, because it thinks it can get immigrants hooked on benefits and push politics left for ever. That's the plan, no?
    - ben_w 6y ago
      Asylum seekers are not allowed to work. I don’t like that they’re not allowed to work, but that’s really the fault of the British government for passing laws that say they’re not allowed to work. They’re also not allowed to vote. That part at least make sense to me.
      - CodeGlitch 6y ago
        I don't agree about being allowed to work - that would drive down wages even more for low-skilled jobs, that the poor already suffer from.
        ben_w 6y ago
        Asylum seekers who can even get as far as the UK are necessarily richer and more resourceful than most — because the average monthly salary in e.g. Syria is 149,000 SYP [0] (~= 222 GBP) which means most of those who could even leave Syria in the first place had no real choice and had to flee to much closer places to Syria such as Turkey or Iraq [1], and those who can reach the UK will overwhelmingly be either be high-skilled, rich by dumb luck, or minors sent by their families. This argument applies to basically all asylum seekers, not just those from the Syrian civil war. That aside, how many unskilled jobs that don’t require idiomatic grasp of English in local accents (which would include cashiers, baristas, and other customer-facing roles) aren’t being replaced by robots and offshoring? [0] http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=211&loctype=1 http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=211&loct... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W...
garyclarke27 6y ago
I moved to Portugal in 2017, mainly because of Brexit, though sun, sea, surf & lifestyle also played a part. In this area Cascais-Lisbon, I’ve met umpteeen very wealthy entrepreneurs and professionals who have moved from the UK including many South Africans and Australians who were in London but had enough of the miserable weather. I don’t miss the UK lifestyle is so much better here.
- clappski 6y ago
  What's the language barrier and job market like there? Portugal seems more appealing to myself than Spain for some reason, perhaps because I've never been to Portugal...
  - kmlx 6y ago
    poor country, no jobs, no money, great food, great weather.
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      Not a terrible deal if you're working for an international firm remotely and can be anywhere. Some job security issues -- e.g. lining up a new one if you get fired or something -- but that can be worked around.
  - garyclarke27 6y ago
    You can easily get by without Portuguese, most locals have excellent English as does the large friendly expat community (many Scandanavians Brazilians and Americans). Economy was booming (prior to Covid) wages are quite low if income originates locally - but most of people that I know (who have a great lifestyle) work for international companies or have their own business.
sparsely 6y ago
I think almost everyone involved would have already been resident, if they are measuring it by passport issuance. I am moving (officially in the next few months, in practice already) to an EU country but won't qualify for a passport for 5 years. The deadline for most people to make a move like this is the end of this year, and in fact some countries (e.g. France) haven't even made the official process for changing residency available yet.
reqres 6y ago
I'm a British software developer and SaaS business owner I left the UK in 2017 because of Brexit. My company generates about GBP150k per employee. Prior to leaving this was 100% UK workforce. Following my relocation this is <50% and falling as we move to contract-based + remote. That's my n=1 experience with the "brain drain" When I left the UK, there was a large & growing political/economic divide, unaffordable housing and poor/declining public services. It gave me a lot of stress and anxiety. Having left, I feel more disinvested from how things are turning out in the UK and it's helped greatly with my wellbeing I've met other brits in my host country that share my n=1 experience. We're all just trying to quietly get along with it really - stay working and raising families
- cyberdrunk 6y ago
  > poor/declining public services Where in Europe public services are noticeably better than in the UK?
- dijit 6y ago
  Piggybacking here because you stated a sentiment that really resonates with me. I left the UK in 2014 for a “1-2yr Max!” Period as my girlfriend was getting her masters degree in Sweden. The echoes of the Ivestigatory Powers Act and the threat of a looming referendum gave me a little pause on my desire to return, but we both thought it was political posturing so we put aside our worries and continued the plans to return, albeit more apprehensively. After the result was announced I was upset, a whole bloc was going to close to me, the ruling party (whom I fundamentally disagree with) was going to remove a lot of the checks which kept it accountable, lots of uncertainty- my family suddenly became openly racist (that’s just anecdotal though, certainly not all those who chose leave are racist but my family apparently was) — which is ironic as my mother and I have polish surnames from my great-grandfather who fought in the war and was exiled from Poland for it. The longer I stayed away the more “detached” I became, the more coldly I looked at the situation and dispassionately assessed statistics and debates. You can’t know from the inside how farcical this whole thing looks. I naturalised to become a Swedish citizen as soon as the option was available to me, I have no personal stake in the future of my home country anymore. I’m still “pro-remain” but only because I still think it’s best for the country. I don’t really care that much any longer.
globular-toast 6y ago
In my experience knowing and working with foreign people in the UK, most of them long to go home. I'm not sure if that's the case for Brits working abroad, but I'm sure it is. I remember after the first time I went abroad it was little things like the font on the road signs that made me feel glad to be back in Britain. The only places I've felt even remotely "at home" while abroad are colonies, like South Africa, even though on paper it would seem much more "foreign" than anywhere in Europe. So I don't think Brexit will fuel anything here. If anything it will make Britain seem more like home and make people less likely to leave. Uncontrolled immigration means your home is less like your home every day. That's what will force people to leave. And unless those people find themselves in a colony, they're doomed to be forever foreign.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  As a Brit who has been living and working abroad for ten years I don’t agree with your take. I love the country I’m living in and feel totally at home here.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    Where do you live?
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
      Iceland.
bobosha 6y ago
Hopefully Americans take some heed from this experience.
benlumen 6y ago
I don't know the current numbers but prior to Brexit, more British people expatriated to countries like Australia, Canada and America than the EU combined (with the exception of Spain, which is high on the list due to retirees moving to the English enclaves in the Costa del Sol). https://www.qropsspecialists.com/the-top-100-british-expat-destinations/ https://www.qropsspecialists.com/the-top-100-british-expat-d... Leaving the European Union is going to allow the UK to make the kinds of trade and visa arrangements with these countries that reflect the interests of the majority of expats, the kind that it should already have had. It seems clear from noises in the government that the UK's also likely to create a low tax, deregulated environment for technology companies while the EU seems more interested in passing regulations that stifle them. As for public services and infrastructure, there's an eye-watering spending plan for this parliament to rebuild the UK. Fair enough to anyone that had enough and left for the EU, I understand that completely. But I think long term, some of those same people are going to be quite surprised by how this plays out. I don't think that the UK is circling the drain as per the non-stop media assessment over recent years.
- oblio 6y ago
  > Leaving the European Union is going to allow the UK to make the kinds of trade and visa arrangements with these countries that reflect the interests of the majority of expats, the kind that it should already have had. If you're talking strictly about immigrants, UK could have made visa arrangements in the EU. A bunch of EU members have such agreements with non EU members, already.
- moystard 6y ago
  The regions of the UK that voted for Brexit will probably be hit the hardest because a deregulated environment for technology companies will not benefit them. The loss of the single market and JIT manufacturing will, most certainly, lead to the closures of manufacturing sites. We could also imagine the downfall of some industries in the UK (aeronautics for example). The eye-watering spending plan will require cash, a lot of it, and the COVID + Hard Brexit that's currently looming could very well prevent it from happening. The government has not been great so far at following up on their promises. The EU was scapegoat that the government and tabloids used for a lot of issues that were mostly national (including the infamous immigration laws). Even after leaving the EU, the blame game is still in full play; never is anyone taking responsibilities for their actions, it's always the others' fault.
azalemeth 6y ago
Another n=1 anecdote here: I am a relatively junior academic in one of the UK's formerly-excellent universities, and I will be moving my lab and leaving the country ahead of Brexit in 2021, starting a new professorship on the last day of December. This is for many different reasons – but the loss of EU citizenship brings with it loss to EURATOM, significantly affecting the availability of medical isotopes; the loss of access to Erasmus exchange-student funding; the loss of access to the ERC; and the loss of regulatory oversight of the European medicines agency, the EMA. All of these things could be retained with political will, but no will is forthcoming. Why does this matter? Well, I am a medical physicist / engineer, and I make things for quantifying biology. The US FDA requirements and the EU EMA requirements define what is feasible. They are often at odds. The EMA is, as a rule, stricter, and in my experience in trying to conduct multinational clinical trials, the EU regulations are the "it must be sterile" counterpart to the FDA "it must be clean". Our QPs have large arguments with US FDA pharmacists about no evidence of harm vs no evidence of safety (the "precautionary principle"). Without getting into specifics, when it comes to dealing with cancer patients, who have compromised immunity and often die of infection, I think it is only acceptable to be utterly paranoid. Some US sites that I will not name explicitly think that "we", the European sites, are paranoid. They think that by having regulations that require an estimated probability of infection as being ≤1e-6 or ≤1e-9 in a clinical trial with ~1k people in it is "overkill", and their "reasonable approach" that is far cheaper, quicker, and easier, is appropriate. I think, and our QPs think, that their approach is quantitatively worse -- but it is very hard to estimate these probabilities; perhaps using a laminar flow hood as opposed to a cleanroom & isolator reduces that probability from 1e-6 to 1e-5 -- but it could well be 1e-3 and we don't know. Yet. At any rate, the only reason that "we are listened to" as a bloc against the huge, multinational factors at play, is because of EMA rules, as implemented in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority, the MHRA, which publishes a many-thousand-page guide to EU EMA rules. Although frustrated by them, I am very glad that these rules exist. They protect patients, and my backside. They are written in blood, from Thalidomide to deaths that have arisen as a result of industrial autoclaves in Britain owned by the pharmaceutical industry being loaded unevenly, leading to "sterile" saline not being sterile. Post-Brexit, I am sure that they are exactly an example of "Brussels red tape" that is to be "streamlined". Similar examples exist in food standards, consumer electronics, and many other areas. Freedom and deregulation come with a very real cost. Can you drink the water in Flint, Michigan yet? The removal of other agencies hamper my ability to recruit students, get grant funding, actually buy isotopes to order -- particularly important as a lot of them come from nuclear reactors on the continent that we do not have equivalents for -- and otherwise function as an academic. The UK's spending on scientific research is, as a function of GDP, far lower than other equivalent nations, particularly Germany and the US. Much of it comes from the charitable sector. In the post-covid world, this has taken a huge hit. Cancer Research UK is down £300m, for example [1], leading to, say, The University of Oxford cutting 40% of its oncology research staff [2] including professors and PIs who have faced the double-whammy of falling ERC funding and CRUK funding. Before you ask, UK governmental funding rules prohibit applications for specific diseases if an equivalent charitable organisation exists, meaning, for example, that you cannot easily apply to the MRC (the Medical Research Council) if it is work that would be fundable by CRUK. Similar stories exist for other charitable funders -- e.g. the British Heart Foundation plans to fire 300 staff following a 50% drop in income [3]. Other universities have started consultations on staff pay-cuts as well as redundancies, following a terrible fall in income both from grants and student fees. I was previously shortlisted for a professorship at another UK university; literally days after the lockdown started, hiring at essentially every university stopped. Now is not a good time to be a UK academic. Universities elsewhere in the world, however, have weathered the coronavirus storm far better, and benefitted from national leadership that has explicitly protected them. The TV ads have started telling us to "Get ready for Brexit". I have to turn the TV off every time they come on. I cannot think of a worse time in history for the nation to do something so monumentally stupid to itself. It is for these reasons that I am moving my research group and escaping pre-Brexit, forgoing seeing my mother at Christmas. Other nations are more civilised. I will be paid more, and, crucially, valued more. Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson may think that I am a moaning leftie-liberal to whom they can say "good riddance". I would like to think that I am trying to build a better future for humanity as a whole in an imperfect world, and hold no romantic ideas of national pride to get in the way. Brexit is about racism and a deluded notion of history for an imperial past. I want no part of it. ---- [1] https://fundraising.co.uk/2020/07/16/cancer-research-uk-anticipates-300m-drop-in-income-over-three-years/ https://fundraising.co.uk/2020/07/16/cancer-research-uk-anti... [2] https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18612973.oxford-university-cut-81-cancer-research-jobs-christmas/ https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18612973.oxford-university... [3] https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2020/july/bhf-announces-consultation-and-warns-of-job-losses https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-arc...

85 points by BerislavLopac 6y ago

Animats 6y ago

Brexit hasn't really hit the UK yet. That happens at the end of 2020.

jgrahamc 6y ago
Whilst technically true Brexit has been happening since 2016, and people and companies have been making decisions based on it.
- growlist 6y ago
  The economy held up pretty well, all things considered, and apparently much to the chagrin of the prophets of doom (not saying you are one or anything).
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    Wouldn't we expect the bulk of the economic effects to hit at the end of the year (when the transition agreement expires)?
    - growlist 6y ago
      Remember when we were told by George Osborne there would be an immediate recession the day after a Leave vote? Edit: 'Brexit could plunge Britain into an instant recession, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have said in the starkest economic warning yet of the consequences of Britain leaving the European Union.' 'he Treasury said unemployment would be 520,000 higher, wages 2.8 per cent lower and house prices 10 per cent down. In a severe shock joblessness would be 820,000 higher, wages down by 4 per cent and house prices 18 per cent lower.' https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-to-create-instant-diy-recession-warns-george-osborne-a7042886.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-to-c... Edit: downvoting facts now? ok HN.
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        As I said in my original comment: wouldn't you expect the majority of the economic effects to hit after the economic situation changes? i.e. when British companies are suddenly subject to tariffs when exporting to Europe at the end of the year. The fact that George Osbourne said that they would happen immediately is neither here nor there really.
      - dnh44 6y ago
        The pound dropped a lot after the vote and it still hasn't recovered. That helps UK exporters a lot but it was still a pretty dramatic change. But I don't see how one asshole being wrong is evidence that Brexit is going to be a good thing.
      - mnm1 6y ago
        Are you saying the UK is not currently in a recession where it has been since at least February/March?
  - nondave 6y ago
    I'm not sure we can come to any real conclusions about the economic impacts of it until we get well into 2021, even if many businesses have been preparing for it.
    - growlist 6y ago
      ? so you also dispute the parent to my comment then: > Whilst technically true Brexit has been happening since 2016, and people and companies have been making decisions based on it.
      - nondave 6y ago
        I don't disagree that it's _been happening_, i.e. some of its effects have happened already and continue to do so, but I wouldn't want to say "done and dusted, economy's fine" until it's properly happened and we're into 2021.
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        Companies have been making decisions based on the potential future changes to their economic position. But their economic position hasn't actually changed yet. For many smaller companies there's not actually much they can do to prepare. They're just going to have to deal with the fallout when it happens. It seems to me that a lot of companies have gone with a "let's just carry on with business as usual while we still can" approach, and that they are going to get hit really badly when their product suddenly costs 20% more for a large proportiom of their customers.
        dnh44 6y ago
        That's pretty much been our position exactly. Preparing is even more difficult because the final terms of Brexit are still undecided so we don't know what to prepare for. Preparing for the worst possible outcome for me would mean relocating everything (both business and family) to the EU except for staff, whom would no longer have jobs. This is obviously an ass-ache so I'm not going to do that unless I have to. On the other hand living somewhere with better weather could be nice so I'll take things as they come.
  - mpweiher 6y ago
    Hmm...that "all things considered" is doing a lot of work here. Although the UK officially left in January of this year, we're still in the transition period, so none of the actual Brexit effects have happened yet, only anticipatory ones. So this is kinda like saying the fall off the cliff hasn't really been bad "so far" while still standing on top of said cliff. And yet, the £ is at all time lows and the cost so far has already been $170 billion, with another $70 billion by the end of the year. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/-170-billion-and-counting-the-cost-of-brexit-for-the-u-k https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/-170-bill...
    - growlist 6y ago
      Ah come on - the general consensus was that the performance of the UK economy was far better than the prophets of doom (of which there were plenty) had forecasted. Don't change the goalposts now.
      - mpweiher 6y ago
        "Consensus" among who? The UK has been lagging: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2019/03/22/uk-economy-since-the-brexit-vote-slower-gdp-growth-lower-productivity-and-a-weaker-pound/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2019/03/22/uk-economy-sin... "Relative to G7 countries, however, the UK has slipped from having the highest growth rate in the G7 before the vote, to the lowest now (OBR 2018)" "Productivity has also suffered. " "The sterling has depreciated and increased costs." "Purchasing power has gone down." "Finally, both inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) have dropped since the referendum." --- https://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-will-cost-uk-more-than-total-payments-to-eu-2020-1?r=DE&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-will-cost-uk-more-tha... "Brexit will have soon cost the UK more than all its payments to the EU over the past 47 years put together" --- https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/12/02/three-years-on-the-uk-is-paying-a-high-economic-price-for-its-decision-to-leave-the-eu/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/12/02/three-years-on-the... "Three years on: the UK is paying a high economic price for its decision to leave the EU" "While the UK started with a steeper growth trajectory, it has fallen behind other G7 countries since the referendum " "Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose dramatically from 0.4 percent in June 2016 to 3 percent in January 2018. " "Real wages dropped from a pre-referendum annual growth rate of 1.1% to less than 0.1% after the referendum" -- And not sure what you mean by "changing goalposts". Surely you agree that the effects of Brexit will primarily come into effect after Brexit has happened?
  - dnh44 6y ago
    The prophets of doom may yet have their moment in the sun considering that no laws have changed yet. And no one knows what the actual rules are going to be come 1/1/2021. In my personal circumstances my business makes most of it's sales to the EU and if things happen like they look like might happen I'm going to be contractually forced to lower prices to compensate for any customs duty my customers will have to pay. Additionally I'll have to spend several more hours per week just to make customs documents, or hire someone to do it for me. So I'm still really hoping the customs union will remain intact.
    - Animats 6y ago
      And no one knows what the actual rules are going to be come 1/1/2021. Right. There's still no deal between the UK and the EU. The UK still wants many of the benefits of being in the EU without submitting to the EU's trade rules.[1] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/brexit-uk-trade-deal-unlikely-for-now-says-eu.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/brexit-uk-trade-deal-unlikel...

deleted 6y ago

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LatteLazy 6y ago

One of the reasons this is important is that it's quite hard to get a visa for many EU Countries. If Germany opened a skilled\tech\finance visa program, you'd easily see double the current number. I'm not sure whether they've held off because they don't want to do it or as a show of goodwill for the "negotiations" but they would be doing themselves and many decent people a favour if they pulled the trigger. Brexiteers won't be reasoned with and being reasonable is seen as weakness by them.

bjornsing 6y ago
> Brexiteers won't be reasoned with and being reasonable is seen as weakness by them. This “reasonableness is weakness” thing seems to be a more and more clear trend in western culture... It’s quite disturbing and seems very dangerous to me. Or is it something that’s been circulating for a long time, just that I haven’t noticed?
- Sambdala 6y ago
  It's the 'movie' version of negotiating that plays to a populist crowd. It intersects with other 'tough guy' identity tropes that are being (successfully) used in domestic political battles to gain power, and then are repositioned to be used in foreign relations with predictably terrible outcomes. The problem is the audience of the negotiating stance isn't the counterparty, it's the domestic base who elected you because they were fed up with nuance and are suspicious of the counterparty. This isn't just a Brexit problem, but is much more widespread. I don't know how you'd be able to align incentives any worse.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    > It's the 'movie' version of negotiating that plays to a populist crowd. See also: "the art of the deal" > The problem is the audience of the negotiating stance isn't the counterparty, it's the domestic base who elected you because they were fed up with nuance and are suspicious of the counterparty. Not just the nuance, but the lack of dramatic change, a handful of examples of bad behavior by the party of nuance being equally corrupt or useless, and a constant stream of propaganda highlighting that.

pjc50 6y ago

See previously https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/26/number-britons-going-to-europe-at-10-year-high https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/26/number-brit... The article is however quite bad at distinguishing between: - British nationals moving their place of residence from the UK to the EU - British nationals already resident in the EU changing their nationality so they can stay there after free movement is taken away from them And doesn't mention the third category: EU nationals normally resident in the UK deciding to return, and whether being deemed ineligable for "settled status" or indefinite leave to remain is a factor in that. People who I have spoken to about this tend to be pragmatic; even a damaged UK provides more economic and social freedom than many parts of eastern Europe. Especially compared to rapidly de-liberalising Poland. However, we've yet to see how badly the government copes with the end of the transition period.

scaryclam 6y ago
It also appears to omit that a lot of skilled workers from EU countries are doing the exact same but in reverse. I always liked the Guardian, but their stories on brexit have been terrible, to the point that you can't trust them at all.
- bennysonething 6y ago
  Yep, nearly everyone on my team is from outside UK. Mostly EU, brexit hasn't affected them at all.
  - moystard 6y ago
    That's not my experience; a lot of friends and colleagues have left the UK to go back to the EU since the referendum vote. Also, in terms of recruitment, very few people are now interested in coming over to the UK for engineering positions. We used to have a lot of talented candidates from EU countries (especially Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, etc.); we have not had a single applicant from these countries since the vote.
  - s1t5 6y ago

fxtentacle 6y ago

Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London, to avoid the risk of being cut off from most of their customers. But now if your employer changes from being an UK to a German company, then suddenly that means that they might not be able to keep employing you, thanks to "your" British politicians trying to keep a hard stance against cross border employment. So then suddenly your choices are: - keep your passport, but you'll likely lose your job and be forced to move out of your house - change your passport and keep your job and your house To me, that explains why now so many Britons choose option B. The article doesn't really explain it, but many of those asking for a passport now are already living in Germany, so they merely want to stay where they are. And as someone living in Germany, I'd like to add that the government handling of Covid, unemployment support, and free access to healthcare will really sweeten the deal. Would you want to move from Berlin (almost no restrictions apart from wearing face masks) to London at this time?

Nursie 6y ago
> Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London Which ones have done this? IIRC JPMC have increased their office capacity in Ireland, but I haven't heard of multiple banks moving headquarters (though I heard lots of rumours that they would)
- alkonaut 6y ago
  This seems to still not be settled. Hard to distinguish banks pressuring governments via threats to leave from banks actually leaving, still. https://www.americanbanker.com/articles/banks-are-ditching-london-offices-and-not-just-because-of-covid-19 https://www.americanbanker.com/articles/banks-are-ditching-l... > In the coming months alone, Barclays may ditch its investment bank's headquarters in the capital; Credit Suisse is offloading nine floors of office space; and Morgan Stanley is reviewing its entire London footprint.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    Seems a mixture of speculation, downsizing of workforce and office space due to coronavirus, and all sorts of other things. I don't think that supports the idea that "Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London"

michaelt 6y ago

> In the four years since the Brexit referendum, 31,600 Brits have been granted dual British/German citizenship: 2019 saw 14,600 naturalisations compared to 622 in 2015. While I agree there's cause for concern in general, a fair portion of these are people's citizenship catching up with where they've built their lives. After all, pre-Brexit you could have lived in Germany since childhood, been educated there, got a job, got married to a German and started a family of German kids - all while holding a UK passport yourself. For someone in that situation, Brexit makes getting that German citizenship a lot more urgent.

readarticle 6y ago
Precisely. Until they begin moving for purely economic reasons rather than personal/political, it’ll continue resembling the USA -> CAN trickle, not the deluge the other way around. EU -> UK numbers should prove interesting.
- oblio 6y ago
  Well, the numbers for Western Europeans should decline because a lot of people won't bother anymore, considering the harsher residence requirements and the numbers for Eastern Europeans will go down because in many cases they won't even qualify for visas at all (just like they don't qualify for US visas now, in many cases). The real question is: will blocking this immigration also make the powers that be redistribute wealth more to the poor natives? Time will tell :-)
jashmatthews 6y ago
Nobody's getting chucked out if they decide to stay on British citizenship and permanent residence. People are taking citizenship now because if they wait they'll be required to renounce their British citizenship to naturalize.
- michaelt 6y ago
  That, and they want the ability to travel to other EU countries a German passport would guarantee them - rather than waiting for the uncertain results of negotiations by the pro-brexit UK government.

m0zg 6y ago

Wouldn't it make sense, as a part of the same study, to answer the question of how many EU citizens are getting the _UK_ citizenship? The fact that this is not even discussed suggests that the study is designed to confirm an underlying agenda.

growlist 6y ago

Surely this is nothing to worry about, given that (according to the Guardian's worldview) we have hundreds of doctors, engineers and scientists arriving at the coast of Kent by dinghy every day. You wonder why the French let them leave!

DanBC 6y ago
That isn't the Guardian worldview. They're saying there are a small number of healthcare professionals arriving as asylum seekers, and that it makes no sense to prevent those people from working especially during the worst pandemic the world has seen for many years.
- growlist 6y ago
  Come on now - the howls of outrage from the Guardian et al would be incessant were the UK to introduce policies that were properly deterrent to illegal immigration. The left is desperate for immigration of all kinds, legal and illegal, because it thinks it can get immigrants hooked on benefits and push politics left for ever. That's the plan, no?
  - ben_w 6y ago
    Asylum seekers are not allowed to work. I don’t like that they’re not allowed to work, but that’s really the fault of the British government for passing laws that say they’re not allowed to work. They’re also not allowed to vote. That part at least make sense to me.
    - CodeGlitch 6y ago
      I don't agree about being allowed to work - that would drive down wages even more for low-skilled jobs, that the poor already suffer from.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        Asylum seekers who can even get as far as the UK are necessarily richer and more resourceful than most — because the average monthly salary in e.g. Syria is 149,000 SYP [0] (~= 222 GBP) which means most of those who could even leave Syria in the first place had no real choice and had to flee to much closer places to Syria such as Turkey or Iraq [1], and those who can reach the UK will overwhelmingly be either be high-skilled, rich by dumb luck, or minors sent by their families. This argument applies to basically all asylum seekers, not just those from the Syrian civil war. That aside, how many unskilled jobs that don’t require idiomatic grasp of English in local accents (which would include cashiers, baristas, and other customer-facing roles) aren’t being replaced by robots and offshoring? [0] http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=211&loctype=1 http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=211&loct... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W...

garyclarke27 6y ago

I moved to Portugal in 2017, mainly because of Brexit, though sun, sea, surf & lifestyle also played a part. In this area Cascais-Lisbon, I’ve met umpteeen very wealthy entrepreneurs and professionals who have moved from the UK including many South Africans and Australians who were in London but had enough of the miserable weather. I don’t miss the UK lifestyle is so much better here.

clappski 6y ago
What's the language barrier and job market like there? Portugal seems more appealing to myself than Spain for some reason, perhaps because I've never been to Portugal...
- kmlx 6y ago
  poor country, no jobs, no money, great food, great weather.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Not a terrible deal if you're working for an international firm remotely and can be anywhere. Some job security issues -- e.g. lining up a new one if you get fired or something -- but that can be worked around.
- garyclarke27 6y ago
  You can easily get by without Portuguese, most locals have excellent English as does the large friendly expat community (many Scandanavians Brazilians and Americans). Economy was booming (prior to Covid) wages are quite low if income originates locally - but most of people that I know (who have a great lifestyle) work for international companies or have their own business.

sparsely 6y ago

I think almost everyone involved would have already been resident, if they are measuring it by passport issuance. I am moving (officially in the next few months, in practice already) to an EU country but won't qualify for a passport for 5 years. The deadline for most people to make a move like this is the end of this year, and in fact some countries (e.g. France) haven't even made the official process for changing residency available yet.

reqres 6y ago

I'm a British software developer and SaaS business owner I left the UK in 2017 because of Brexit. My company generates about GBP150k per employee. Prior to leaving this was 100% UK workforce. Following my relocation this is <50% and falling as we move to contract-based + remote. That's my n=1 experience with the "brain drain" When I left the UK, there was a large & growing political/economic divide, unaffordable housing and poor/declining public services. It gave me a lot of stress and anxiety. Having left, I feel more disinvested from how things are turning out in the UK and it's helped greatly with my wellbeing I've met other brits in my host country that share my n=1 experience. We're all just trying to quietly get along with it really - stay working and raising families

cyberdrunk 6y ago
> poor/declining public services Where in Europe public services are noticeably better than in the UK?
dijit 6y ago
Piggybacking here because you stated a sentiment that really resonates with me. I left the UK in 2014 for a “1-2yr Max!” Period as my girlfriend was getting her masters degree in Sweden. The echoes of the Ivestigatory Powers Act and the threat of a looming referendum gave me a little pause on my desire to return, but we both thought it was political posturing so we put aside our worries and continued the plans to return, albeit more apprehensively. After the result was announced I was upset, a whole bloc was going to close to me, the ruling party (whom I fundamentally disagree with) was going to remove a lot of the checks which kept it accountable, lots of uncertainty- my family suddenly became openly racist (that’s just anecdotal though, certainly not all those who chose leave are racist but my family apparently was) — which is ironic as my mother and I have polish surnames from my great-grandfather who fought in the war and was exiled from Poland for it. The longer I stayed away the more “detached” I became, the more coldly I looked at the situation and dispassionately assessed statistics and debates. You can’t know from the inside how farcical this whole thing looks. I naturalised to become a Swedish citizen as soon as the option was available to me, I have no personal stake in the future of my home country anymore. I’m still “pro-remain” but only because I still think it’s best for the country. I don’t really care that much any longer.

globular-toast 6y ago

In my experience knowing and working with foreign people in the UK, most of them long to go home. I'm not sure if that's the case for Brits working abroad, but I'm sure it is. I remember after the first time I went abroad it was little things like the font on the road signs that made me feel glad to be back in Britain. The only places I've felt even remotely "at home" while abroad are colonies, like South Africa, even though on paper it would seem much more "foreign" than anywhere in Europe. So I don't think Brexit will fuel anything here. If anything it will make Britain seem more like home and make people less likely to leave. Uncontrolled immigration means your home is less like your home every day. That's what will force people to leave. And unless those people find themselves in a colony, they're doomed to be forever foreign.

meheleventyone 6y ago
As a Brit who has been living and working abroad for ten years I don’t agree with your take. I love the country I’m living in and feel totally at home here.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  Where do you live?
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    Iceland.

bobosha 6y ago

Hopefully Americans take some heed from this experience.

benlumen 6y ago

I don't know the current numbers but prior to Brexit, more British people expatriated to countries like Australia, Canada and America than the EU combined (with the exception of Spain, which is high on the list due to retirees moving to the English enclaves in the Costa del Sol). https://www.qropsspecialists.com/the-top-100-british-expat-destinations/ https://www.qropsspecialists.com/the-top-100-british-expat-d... Leaving the European Union is going to allow the UK to make the kinds of trade and visa arrangements with these countries that reflect the interests of the majority of expats, the kind that it should already have had. It seems clear from noises in the government that the UK's also likely to create a low tax, deregulated environment for technology companies while the EU seems more interested in passing regulations that stifle them. As for public services and infrastructure, there's an eye-watering spending plan for this parliament to rebuild the UK. Fair enough to anyone that had enough and left for the EU, I understand that completely. But I think long term, some of those same people are going to be quite surprised by how this plays out. I don't think that the UK is circling the drain as per the non-stop media assessment over recent years.

oblio 6y ago
> Leaving the European Union is going to allow the UK to make the kinds of trade and visa arrangements with these countries that reflect the interests of the majority of expats, the kind that it should already have had. If you're talking strictly about immigrants, UK could have made visa arrangements in the EU. A bunch of EU members have such agreements with non EU members, already.
moystard 6y ago
The regions of the UK that voted for Brexit will probably be hit the hardest because a deregulated environment for technology companies will not benefit them. The loss of the single market and JIT manufacturing will, most certainly, lead to the closures of manufacturing sites. We could also imagine the downfall of some industries in the UK (aeronautics for example). The eye-watering spending plan will require cash, a lot of it, and the COVID + Hard Brexit that's currently looming could very well prevent it from happening. The government has not been great so far at following up on their promises. The EU was scapegoat that the government and tabloids used for a lot of issues that were mostly national (including the infamous immigration laws). Even after leaving the EU, the blame game is still in full play; never is anyone taking responsibilities for their actions, it's always the others' fault.

azalemeth 6y ago

Another n=1 anecdote here: I am a relatively junior academic in one of the UK's formerly-excellent universities, and I will be moving my lab and leaving the country ahead of Brexit in 2021, starting a new professorship on the last day of December. This is for many different reasons – but the loss of EU citizenship brings with it loss to EURATOM, significantly affecting the availability of medical isotopes; the loss of access to Erasmus exchange-student funding; the loss of access to the ERC; and the loss of regulatory oversight of the European medicines agency, the EMA. All of these things could be retained with political will, but no will is forthcoming. Why does this matter? Well, I am a medical physicist / engineer, and I make things for quantifying biology. The US FDA requirements and the EU EMA requirements define what is feasible. They are often at odds. The EMA is, as a rule, stricter, and in my experience in trying to conduct multinational clinical trials, the EU regulations are the "it must be sterile" counterpart to the FDA "it must be clean". Our QPs have large arguments with US FDA pharmacists about no evidence of harm vs no evidence of safety (the "precautionary principle"). Without getting into specifics, when it comes to dealing with cancer patients, who have compromised immunity and often die of infection, I think it is only acceptable to be utterly paranoid. Some US sites that I will not name explicitly think that "we", the European sites, are paranoid. They think that by having regulations that require an estimated probability of infection as being ≤1e-6 or ≤1e-9 in a clinical trial with ~1k people in it is "overkill", and their "reasonable approach" that is far cheaper, quicker, and easier, is appropriate. I think, and our QPs think, that their approach is quantitatively worse -- but it is very hard to estimate these probabilities; perhaps using a laminar flow hood as opposed to a cleanroom & isolator reduces that probability from 1e-6 to 1e-5 -- but it could well be 1e-3 and we don't know. Yet. At any rate, the only reason that "we are listened to" as a bloc against the huge, multinational factors at play, is because of EMA rules, as implemented in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority, the MHRA, which publishes a many-thousand-page guide to EU EMA rules. Although frustrated by them, I am very glad that these rules exist. They protect patients, and my backside. They are written in blood, from Thalidomide to deaths that have arisen as a result of industrial autoclaves in Britain owned by the pharmaceutical industry being loaded unevenly, leading to "sterile" saline not being sterile. Post-Brexit, I am sure that they are exactly an example of "Brussels red tape" that is to be "streamlined". Similar examples exist in food standards, consumer electronics, and many other areas. Freedom and deregulation come with a very real cost. Can you drink the water in Flint, Michigan yet? The removal of other agencies hamper my ability to recruit students, get grant funding, actually buy isotopes to order -- particularly important as a lot of them come from nuclear reactors on the continent that we do not have equivalents for -- and otherwise function as an academic. The UK's spending on scientific research is, as a function of GDP, far lower than other equivalent nations, particularly Germany and the US. Much of it comes from the charitable sector. In the post-covid world, this has taken a huge hit. Cancer Research UK is down £300m, for example [1], leading to, say, The University of Oxford cutting 40% of its oncology research staff [2] including professors and PIs who have faced the double-whammy of falling ERC funding and CRUK funding. Before you ask, UK governmental funding rules prohibit applications for specific diseases if an equivalent charitable organisation exists, meaning, for example, that you cannot easily apply to the MRC (the Medical Research Council) if it is work that would be fundable by CRUK. Similar stories exist for other charitable funders -- e.g. the British Heart Foundation plans to fire 300 staff following a 50% drop in income [3]. Other universities have started consultations on staff pay-cuts as well as redundancies, following a terrible fall in income both from grants and student fees. I was previously shortlisted for a professorship at another UK university; literally days after the lockdown started, hiring at essentially every university stopped. Now is not a good time to be a UK academic. Universities elsewhere in the world, however, have weathered the coronavirus storm far better, and benefitted from national leadership that has explicitly protected them. The TV ads have started telling us to "Get ready for Brexit". I have to turn the TV off every time they come on. I cannot think of a worse time in history for the nation to do something so monumentally stupid to itself. It is for these reasons that I am moving my research group and escaping pre-Brexit, forgoing seeing my mother at Christmas. Other nations are more civilised. I will be paid more, and, crucially, valued more. Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson may think that I am a moaning leftie-liberal to whom they can say "good riddance". I would like to think that I am trying to build a better future for humanity as a whole in an imperfect world, and hold no romantic ideas of national pride to get in the way. Brexit is about racism and a deluded notion of history for an imperial past. I want no part of it. ---- [1] https://fundraising.co.uk/2020/07/16/cancer-research-uk-anticipates-300m-drop-in-income-over-three-years/ https://fundraising.co.uk/2020/07/16/cancer-research-uk-anti... [2] https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18612973.oxford-university-cut-81-cancer-research-jobs-christmas/ https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18612973.oxford-university... [3] https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2020/july/bhf-announces-consultation-and-warns-of-job-losses https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-arc...