Brexit fuels brain drain as skilled Britons head to the EU
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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.
EU -> UK numbers should prove interesting.
The real question is: will blocking this immigration also make the powers that be redistribute wealth more to the poor natives? Time will tell :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European_U...
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
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.
None of those are particular to Brexit. House prices have been unaffordable to many in Britain since the 80s, and even more so, in the 90s. Houses prices are also supply and demand. Since Britain's population has increased by almost 10 million since 1997, demand vastly outstrips supply, especially in the south-east. This affects public services too.
Political divide is an interesting one. Given the two party politics in the UK, plus fringes, and the rise of social media (and Warhol's prophecy), this would also be a problem. Brexit made it worse, but without a crystal ball, it's impossible to say how much worse.
Where in Europe public services are noticeably better than in the UK?
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.
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.
On the other hand, https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/2019/brexit-uncertainty-motivate... shows a (smaller, and, eye-balling it, not with a break in the trend at time of Brexit) uptick in EU naturalizations in the UK, too.
As you say, I think way more significant will be the numbers of EU citizens resident in the UK deciding to leave.
Hence does this detail really change the brain drain discussion?
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?
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)
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.
"The US investment bank, Goldman Sachs is to trial its Brexit contingency plans by making senior position transfers to Frankfurt, following concerns that the UK will lose it’s ‘passporting rights’."
"Last month, Credit Suisse revealed it was planning to move about 250 of its 5,500 London banking jobs in the first phase its Brexit contingency plans. Bloomberg reported employees in areas such as trading and mergers and acquisitions were likely to be relocated to Frankfurt or Madrid, ..."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/brexit-latest-ba...
https://qz.com/1095155/brexit-contingency-plan-goldman-sachs...
https://www.relocatemagazine.com/news/brexit-goldman-sachs-t...
So GS haven't moved headquarters, even though they have moved a small number of personnel.
Some others appear to be increasing capacity in Frankfurt and other European centres, or at least they were two years ago. All very predictable and sensible given what may happen.
But this still doesn't add up to "Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London". In fact so far there hasn't been a single example (here, in the thread) of a bank that has actually done that. Just a lot of speculation.
(I'm not making any strong claims that it won't happen, by the way, I just wanted to challenge the trope that it already has happened)
Seems unlikely they'll have vacated. The stories about people moving to Frankfurt all mention a tiny handful of people.
The pound was the world reserve currency, India was the jewel in the largest empire the world has ever seen and upon which the sun would never set, and Westminster ruled directly and indirectly over more than a third of the world GDP — roughly equivalent to $30 trillion/year against the world of 2018.
When my brother was a child, that same great empire had been so reduced that it found itself forced to make a series of humiliating fishing rights concessions to Iceland, total population ~350,000.
The world can become unrecognisable in even just a few years; that just gets more likely when you assume nothing can ever change.
Back in the early 00's when it looked like Frankfurt might compete with London, Gordon Brown introduced 'light touch regulation', and aligned us strongly with the US which made Frankfurt unattractive to US banks. Of course that fanned the winds of the credit crunch.
Let's hope history doesn't repeat itself post-2020, and Rishi Sunak doesn't do anything like that. But who knows?
When the British took over India it was 31% of global GDP. When they left India's share of global GDP was 2%.
Well, they didn't. If anything they're flying with joy on the prospect of not being as tied to EU regulations and making the UK more of a tax-haven...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/05/04/leavers-have-a-bet...
Really I think most people generally agree on what they want from society. Outside of the fringes, the primary points of contention revolve around how to prioritize issues over other issues, and the specifics of the approach to solving them.
One aspect of that is that people are not rational by nature. Another is that we cannot change that about them and actually it's as much a force of nature as a hurricane or an earthquake. You cannot argue or reason with any of these forces.
Our mistake has been failing to build quake proof cities, not failing to appreciate the earthquakes point of view...
So we're presented with 2 possible realities:
* EITHER, there is no rationale for brexit beyond the "It's what I want and I don't know why but I do" rationale (weak right?). I might not agree with this, but I would respect it if that was what brexiteers said. I can't justify my love of chocolate but I still love it.
* OR, There is a rationale for brexit, but it is secret and cannot be shared with me, and people insist they will share it for unknown reasons, but then don't also for other unknown reasons.
This second position seems a little crazy, but I will admit it is technically possible. Perhaps 17million people have all been initiated into the secrets of brexit and my small remainer mind cannot fathoms such great matters...
How have you managed hundreds of conversations with hundreds of different "brexiteers"? Do you have exact figures? Is it part of your job? Is a "brexiteer" the same as someone who voted to leave the EU, or do you mean something more specific?
People need to stop pretending they had a viable reason for their vote. If they admitted it was just personal preference I'd accept that. But pretending it was logical when it wasn't is frankly insulting.
Honestly I think your attitude here is terrible
One of the major reasons given there in the surveys is that leave voters wanted UK law to be made by the UK. How has that been "disproven"?
It may not be something you care about, but that's very different.
God this whole thing is a huge mess...
Edit: if you live in Berlin: https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/328595/
Not all EU member states have implemented Blue Card. Ireland and Denmark have an opt-out of EU immigration policy under the EU treaties. (So did the United Kingdom prior to Brexit.) All other member states are supposed to implement it, but the issue with directives is that member states often fail to do so at all, or fail to do so properly. The European Commission can prosecute them in the European Court of Justice for those failures, which can result in them being fined by the EU.
So if you seriously plan to move, now is a very good time to do it.
Lots of info here: https://britishineurope.org/
>It's also quite hard to get a work visa for UK
The UK has had enough of experts...
> The UK has had enough of experts...
What do you mean?
It's an amazing way to move to the EU, and in Germany it's a really easy way to get Permanent Residence (you can do it in 21 months, if you learn German up to B1, or 36 otherwise). It also guarantees a high enough salary (55k minimum).
There are far far easier way and often under much better terms to get a work visa in virtually any EU member state as both skilled and unskilled workers.
Although, getting the appointment with foreigners office took 5 months (after my first entry to the country), because of the high number of applicants, but they have a legislation that automatically extends your visa if you have an appointment for a long term residence permit.
https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa/kinds-of-visa/eu-...
It has higher requirements than a Tier 2 General Work Visa in the UK for example, both in terms of salary and education.
For Germany specifically if you are over 45 years old getting a work visa would hard to impossible, you need to provide proof of substantial existing retirement funds such as a private pension.
I assume most of the readers here would be able to get a job that is above Blue Card minimum salary, since the median pay for software developers here are above the requirement.
But that's not true at all. If you asked a Brexiteer, they would say Article 50 could have been invoked the day after the referendum, and instead they spent 2 whole years trying to find an accommodation that would satisfy Remainers too, you can't ask for any more "reasoning with" than that. But Remainers wouldn't budge from the position of ignoring the referendum result completely, they had no regard whatsoever for the wishes of Brexiteers. None at all. We could have had such a soft Brexit that it would have been indistinguishable from remaining, but hardline Remainers made that all but impossible with their intransigence.
Eventually the entire country grew tired of those antics and delivered Boris an 80-seat majority on his single mantra of "get Brexit done". I know this is off-narrative but the Brexiteers bent over backwards to be reasonable.
From the outside, Leavers ran the government. Leavers insisted that May was a great negotiator by holding her cards close to her chest (and then fired her ASAP when they saw her cards).
From the outside, Leavers openly told Remainers that Leavers had no reason to compromise with anyone — not the EU, not Remainers, and not each other.
Every time I discussed anything with a Leaver, my concerns were always and without fail dismissed as “Project Fear” — the other party would even say that about the possibility of no deal while saying no deal was their negotiating tactic.
Now, I don’t doubt that you’ve seen some idiots promoting Remain just as I’ve seen idiots promoting Leave — but can you give any example of Leave trying to compromise with Remain?
Not with each other (basically everyone hates what May came up with, Remain and Leave alike), not with the EU, but with Remain?
It would have been about as good as Brexit could have been, conditional on reducing immigration bring the primary goal.
Berlin has a tech startup sector (supposedly) almost as big as London. So whether it's a good place to start a company may not matter: if it is where all the jobs are, and I need a job then I'm there.
I do Fintech, so I'm looking at a niche of startups. That pushes me to Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris and Zurich as those are the (non London) finance hubs in the EU. But if I saw a job where I could work remotely or where they were based elsewhere, I'd go elsewhere.
I actually just started working remotely for a company technically incorporated in London. So once I pass probation etc, I may go to Germany to master my German. But as you indicate, I'd find a place with good work life balance and low costs and opportunities that suit me. Not just blindly walk to Berlin. :)
Respectfully, neither will many 'remainers'. There are many who refuse to even consider reasons people may have had for wanting to leave, and insist on viewing everything through a lens of presumed racism.
I voted to remain, but not through any great conviction. I don't believe that any sort of responsive democracy is really possible at the scale of the EU, and I do believe that the democratic institutions of the EU are lacking. We know that comparatively not all that many British people make much use of freedom of movement. I also don't believe that all concerns about the volume and speed of immigration to the UK should be brushed off as mere xenophobia or racism, in light of housing shortages. That's not to say that these necessarily add up to a leave vote, they didn't in my case, nor that leaving the EU will fix anything.
But to view the entirety of 17 million leave voters as unreasonable by definition, well that's pretty unreasonable itself.
I disagree with your statement on the democracy not working at the scale of the EU. The EU is a democratic institution, with limited responsibilities (the UK famously fought back against tighter integration). Recent history in the EU has shown that people are ready for more integration now that the UK is (unfortunately) gone (as seen 2 weeks ago with the common debt).
> The soft Brexit proposition exploded right after the vote,
I've not seen much evidence of this particularly, our parliament spent a long time arguing over exactly what flavour of soft brexit might be acceptable while both hard brexiter and hard remainer minorities postured and shouted and in some cases started legal proceedings. Eventually the different groups blocked and barracked each other so much the whole thing fell apart.
Outside of parliament there were plenty of cheerleaders for just leaving, absent any ongoing agreement, but also plenty for finding methods to overturn the entire thing.
> I disagree with your statement on the democracy not working at the scale of the EU.
But you understand that I have an opinion based on looking at the EU and at other large democracies (like the US), observing how their political classes are remote from the public and relatively unaccountable, and how hard it seems to be for citizens to affect change? As compared to somewhere like Iceland, where a small movement can have a big effect? And you grant that it is a reasonable opinion to hold even if you yourself don't hold it and disagree with it being important?
That's my point here really, we don't have to agree, but casting everyone that disagrees you as unreasonable and unwilling to listen to reason is not a good thing. Though it does seem to happen in a lot of public discourse these days.
The problem with a referendum and abstract propositions is that people all put something different behind the Brexit vote and it was then impossible to reconcile all the positions (plus all the empty promises like the 350m for the NHS). Brexit became something very different than what was originally sold and some people asked for a second referendum to clarify the situation now that things were getting clearer. This act can be criticized or misunderstood, but I don't think anyone can argue that Brexit is a very different animal 4 years later (the unicorn honestly looks more like a donkey up close).
Brexit has shown that the disconnection between the political class and the people had nothing to do with the EU. Dominic Cumming refused to quit despite being caught in clear breach of the lockdown is the perfect example of it.
The EU parliament is elected directly by the voters, and representative are nominated by governments that are also elected. The US has a completely different electoral system, where (like in the UK), candidates with fewer national votes can become leaders (I find these systems undemocratic, a voice is a voice, its geographical location should not matter).
You didn't, that's not an accusation I'm making against you, it was the point I tried to get across in the first post of mine that you replied to. I was hoping you'd agree that it was unhelpful to cast all disagreement as necessarily unreasonable, something the top poster seemed to be doing.
> Brexit has shown that the disconnection between the political class and the people had nothing to do with the EU
I don't disagree with this either (well, maybe I'd modify it slightly, and say it has more to do with Westminster than the EU, but I don't absolve the EU entirely). In fact I think we need much more devolved and locally empowered democracy within the UK. And this isn't incompatible with EU membership. (I mentioned I voted 'remain', right?)
However, as the EU drives towards closer union I fear that we'll see the problems that are present in other large democracies, and which I think are already present in the EU structures to various extents, exaggerate.
> The EU parliament is elected directly by the voters, and representative are nominated by governments that are also elected.
That second part there is an issue, IMHO, because I vote for a local candidate for the UK parliament, they then (if part of the ruling party) put their mandate behind a prime minister, and (s)he effectively chooses our representative on the Commission, which has a lot of power. This is several steps removed from any vote. Is it the fault of the EU? I'm unsure, perhaps we could have a system of directly electing a commissioner, but perhaps that's a bad idea as a technocrat is what's wanted there. Either way the UK seat on the commission has been held by people like Lord Mandelson - twice disgraced out of cabinet, an electoral liability who got promoted to the lords and then the commission. I'd prefer to see the commission de-emphasised (which I know has been happening to some extent, slowly).
I think the whole edifice needs a rework, local, national and supra-national.
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-c...
Edit: downvoting facts now? ok HN.
The fact that George Osbourne said that they would happen immediately is neither here nor there really.
But I don't see how one asshole being wrong is evidence that Brexit is going to be a good thing.
> Whilst technically true Brexit has been happening since 2016, and people and companies have been making decisions based on it.
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.
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.
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-bill...
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-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...
"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?
https://fullfact.org/economy/how-accurate-have-brexit-foreca...
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.
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-unlikel...
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.
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-anti...
[2] https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18612973.oxford-university...
[3] https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-arc...