Keep Calm And Leave: Why Brits Don’t See ‘Brexodus’ Coming

You might know Joris Luyendijk from his anthropological ‘Banking Blog' on the Guardian, where several years after the crash, he conducted hundreds of anonymous interviews with bankers about life ‘on the inside’. He still regularly contributes to the paper, commenting on economics and more recently Brexit. A Dutch national, he views British politics as an outsider. As a fellow Dutch national living in the UK, I often recognise his bewilderment. Judging by the more than two thousand comments on the article, it seems as if this story resonated with others, too (though they did include the inevitable trolls).

The story is based on a recent Deloitte study, warning that nearly half of all highly skilled EU workers could leave the UK within five years. Luyendijk goes some way in explaining why:

“Highly educated EU nationals know that they have highly sought-after skills — many of us are not in British jobs taken by Europeans but in European jobs done in Britain. Why not take that job with us back to the EU? And why risk investing in a country that could turn on you at any moment? This question is even more urgent for those from Austria, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Estonia or Lithuania: countries that make it very difficult for their citizens to acquire a second nationality.”

It is just unfortunate that most of the Brexit negotiators don’t seem to take notice.