Brexit Testimonies

"I also fear for my daughters and their husbands and children. However my guess they will probably vote with their feet when the bitter reality – of reduced lifestyle, income and opportunities – sets in."

I am a UK citizen, but because I was born in Northern Ireland, the day after Brexit I took out parallel Irish Citizenship in order to retain EU flexibility (I have to add that Ireland’s tiny DFA is far more approachable, useful and courteous than the ever haughty self-important UK FCO which prides itself on ignoring those who pay for it in order to schmooze those who don’t). I am currently living in Cyprus where I am married to a Spaniard and we will likely move to Spain in 2018 when my wife retires.

I feel at an ‘interesting’ cusp-point”. I will be 63 this year: I am close to state retirement age but am not there yet. I will lose the right to vote in the UK in the next 5 years.

I have no idea what health care provision I will have in the future. I was basing all, until Brexit, on the mutual UK/Spanish arrangements within the EU. These may fail after March 2019. I feel entitled to this (having paid into the UK for 35+ years).

I have as little idea what will happen about my state pension. Again, I have paid in more years for NI than necessary in the UK. My dismal expectation is that a mean-minded, revenue-losing and increasingly desperate government will remove the indexing applicable today for all those living in the EU, irrespective of their contributions. (Of course, they may do it for UK pensioners as well.)

There is an inevitable side-effect of either or both of the above. Should my financial or health circumstances deteriorate, I envisage having no choice but to return to the UK. In so doing I necessarily ‘become a burden’ on the UK (unless the government removes the right of UK citizens to return to the UK???).

I have no faith in the UK government to know how to listen to or provide representation for the UK’s 5-15 million overseas citizens, who would merit at least 100-200 MPs (given an average UK constituency size of 70,000). For the record, I have already de-invested in the UK, having removed 95%+ of all financial resources and assets (including a modest private pension) from the UK. Sterling declines faster than an ice cream melting.

I also fear for my daughters and their husbands and children. However my guess they will probably vote with their feet when the bitter reality – of reduced lifestyle, income and opportunities – sets in. Fortunately, both daughters should be able to obtain Irish citizenship and move to the EU. The ultimate irony is that one is a UK-trained Intensive Care Unit Nurse and the other is multi-lingual, overworked and underpaid in an overstretched Civil Service that did not need Brexit. The UK can afford to lose neither.