Brexit Testimonies

"There has been such a huge focus on the right to move of other EU nationals to the UK, that people have ignored the fact that we have the same rights to go the other way. And this is a massive benefit if, like me, you were not born rich."

When I heard about the proposed referendum I was living in Asia working as an English teacher. It worried me enough to move back to the EU to ensure I would be here if people did vote to leave the EU. 

As someone who has lived and worked in many parts of the world, I can't tell you how much I have welcomed the fact that as an EU citizen I can just live and work anywhere in the bloc without constantly having to face the hassles I've had elsewhere in the world with constant paperwork around visa extensions and work permits etc. I think this aspect to the benefits for UK citizens sitting within the EU has been lost in the debate. There has been such a huge focus on the right to move of other EU nationals to the UK, that people have ignored the fact that we have the same rights to go the other way. And this is a massive benefit if, like me, you were not born rich. Rich people have always been able to relocate to other parts of the world but the right to live and work across the EU means that even people who have to work for a living can relocate to beautiful places and the benefits of this to the UK are enormous: people self-educate abroad, learning new languages, new skills, become more tolerant of different ways of living life. This loss of the right to work so easily across the EU will disproportionately affect young people and that is a great tragedy.

Given all that, the Brexit debate has interested me a great deal. There are many major flaws to the EU that I can see, for example, in terms of the way Brussels is always dictating things to Spain which it can do because Spain is part of the Eurozone and, as such, its economic performance is of concern to the wider bloc. As someone who believes democracy functions best the more local it is, I think this is a major flaw of the project. One thing that has worried me greatly, though, about the debate in Britain is how blinkered both sides are, ignoring anything that challenges their arguments. So the way the Remainers portray things is as if the EU is the greatest thing ever. It isn't. It has a lot of flaws that shouldn't be ignored and a debate about these is well worth having. Also I have been shocked at how nasty Remainers can be about Brexiteers. The 'Bollocks to Brexit' campaign I saw when I was back in the UK just came across as desperately aggressive. When I talked to the people campaigning one of them loudly told me that all Brexiteers are stupid which made me doubt that anyone who voted for Brexit the first time round would be likely to change their opinion given how Remainers are describing them rather than trying to understand their points of view.

I am just hoping that having lived now in Spain for five years I will be able to get permanent residency. I feel uncomfortable with the idea at the moment of taking Spanish citizenship because I don't think changing your nationality is a simple thing to do. I have a British sense of humour, a British perspective on history, I am proud of my country's literary and scientific heritage. I can't just swap and become Spanish. This shouldn't matter because I love my adopted country too and feel comfortable being British and living in Spain enjoying this beautiful culture that makes me a better person from the benefits of absorbing the good parts of Spanish ways of life into myself. I think changing my nationality would be an extreme thing to do, but if it means keeping my right to live and work across the EU and this is my only option, well, I will have to give it some serious thought.