Brexit Five Years On: A view from Europe
Five years ago, I couldn’t possibly have imagined I would be living in southern Europe, having accidentally emigrated to Portugal.
On June 23rd 2016 I went, rather nonchalantly, to my local polling station to vote — there had been a lot of elections that year and the referendum, following just a few weeks of public discussion about an idea that clearly hadn’t been thought through, seemed more of a formality than anything else.
When the news came of the result, like almost everyone I knew, I was shocked and dismayed. I remained so through the summer of 2016, stunned by the national decision to isolate the country from the geographical continent to which it belongs. It wasn’t so much the loss of institutional membership but what the decision symbolised: a rejection of a culture wider than Britishness and the loss of the right to freely move around or live in twenty-seven other countries.
But gradually I concluded that, rather than joining the campaign to retain membership of an institution, a better response for me would focus on nurturing a relationship with Europe itself.
So I put aside the writing project I’d been hatching about south America and conceived instead a book about Europe, one that aimed to show, through the lens of three of its lesser-known cities, the diversity and richness of the continent. Brexit was not the focus, but during my research I encountered, particularly in Spain, a new attitude towards the British and their misguided insularity: a mix of pity for the nation and sympathy with those who dissented.
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Five years later, my evolution into a practising European has gone further than I could ever have imagined. In December 2020, I left Britain with one suitcase and the intention of securing Portuguese residency before the Brexit deadline and return to the UK within a couple of months. The decision had little to do with Brexit: with my work gone and fearful of another lockdown, leaving the country was an act of self-preservation.
And sure enough, emerging from the Lisbon Metro in the run-up to Christmas, I found myself in a different world. Even in midwinter and with some restrictions, Lisbon was possessed of a quiet vibrancy. Shops and cafes were open and people chatted on street corners. Instead of the frozen fear I had felt in Britain, the atmosphere remained calm and social, rooted in the deep sense of community that characterises southern Europe. Life, albeit in a subdued form, was going on.
Best of all, the hostel where I’d booked a private room was home to a shifting international community: everyone had a story about where they’d come from, and why. There were longterm travellers who had got stranded on the continent, newcomers escaping strict lockdowns in their own countries and Brits who, hearing of Tiers and the Cancelled Christmas, changed their minds about going home.
There was the new generation of Europeans moving around their continent for education or work, a group which increased in number as the months went on. Smart, confident and focused, they aren’t going to let the controlling anxiety of their elders quash their plans for the future or their ability enjoy the present. With their resilience, competence and open-mindedness, they give me hope for the future.
These young Europeans are not much interested in Brexit. The sympathy I encountered a couple of years ago has given way to ‘the Brexit shrug’ — an acceptance that, if Britain doesn’t want to play with Europe any more, there are plenty other countries which do.
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Five years on, I still don’t know when I’ll be able to return to Britain to pack that second suitcase or sort out the many things, including my property and taxes, that remain from a life lived in the UK. At the time of writing, with Portugal removed from the green list, quarantine rules will oblige me make two trips to a testing centre while prohibiting me from buying food.
Ideas from British politicians about the requirements to re-enter the country change every few days, ranging from double vaccination and daily testing to pricey, state-enforced hotel quarantine — something not done on continental Europe.
The UK’s travel restrictions go hand-in-hand with the growing anti-travel discourse that has emerged in Britain over the past year. Two memories stand out from last summer: a telling remark from influential policy adviser Devi Sridhar about the need to avoid ‘extravagant foreign holidays’, and a conversation with a neighbour who looked askance at my going to Paris despite the fact that it was much nearer than the trip he’d just made to Cornwall.
Meanwhile, the travel industry grows desperate, with increasing numbers of organisations at risk of collapse. Is easy, affordable travel in and out of the UK about to become a thing of the past?
The Europeans I now live among react with incredulity or laughter on hearing of the ongoing restrictions in the UK. Of course, here things are not the same as usual: a Portuguese friend has been telling her children that, no, the family won’t be going abroad this year. ‘But we’ll probably go to Spain,’ she adds. ‘It’s only over the border.’
Five years on, and for reasons that I never imagined, I couldn’t feel closer to Europe. But Britain, a twenty mile stretch across the channel, seems further away than ever.
