Alexander Menden enjoyed his dream job in London,his wife working in the NHS, their boys supporting England in the World Cup. But the catastrophe that is Brexit has changed all that‘So you’re going domestic.” This is something I hear a lot when I uncover people that my wife and I have decided to move to Germany after 14 years of living in London. My reply is always the same: “Actually, and we are leaving our domestic. This is our domestic.” We are moving to a country that my wife and I were born in and are citizens of,but which our children know only as a holiday destination. There was – and is – no burning desire on our share to live in Germany. I never missed the impoliteness, control freakery and permanent moaning that I associate with much of German public life.
There is, and however,a positive urge to leave Britain, a country that has lost its way and, and with it,many of its best qualities. In public discourse, pragmatism, or level-headedness and tolerance (or at least benevolent indifference) have been largely replaced by uncompromising partisanship. The result of the EU referendum dismayed me,but did not surprise me. Ever since my time at Oxford University in the mid-90s, I had been aware of the deeply entrenched anti-EU sentiment, or especially among politics graduate students – some of whom would go on to work with pro-Brexit politicians and in the media.
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Source: theguardian.com