We moved to Oslo from London with two small kids almost 5 years ago. Well, as happens, the kids are not so small anymore and had been waxing lyrical about London for some time now, fascinated by this place that they were born in, that we tell them stories about, but that they can’t really remember. So, we decided that it was time to take them back for a trip. Half-term last week or vinterferie, literally winter holiday, gave us five days off school so off we went to Gardermoen airport heading for Heathrow.
The seismic event in the UK since we left is, of course, the Brexit vote and I’ve been following progress on negotiations, UK government wrangles, migrant concerns, and apparent EU intransigence with great interest. I love London and spent some of my happiest years there. We have no plan to move back there but there will always be a connection. So I was curious to go visit last week and see what had changed.
Somehow it felt like the very fabric of the UK would change with that Brexit vote, or certainly that’s the way it seemed from afar when reading the press. The young generation angry with the older generation for selling them out. An increase in hate crimes. Many ordinary British people angry at this new isolationist Britain, angry at losing the benefits of being EU members and the prospect of a boundary with Europe that had been so carefully chipped away at for decades. The Brexit vote has far ranging consequences for all in the UK, it’s personal to everyone. I’ve also been following the migrant campaigns on social media and particularly prominent are the three million EU-born migrants who have made the UK their home and are trying to protect their future status and freedoms. That’s the group that my husband and I would have belonged to if we still lived there.
Visiting last week, I expected to see some evidence of this seismic change on the streets. Britain had changed irrevocably, hadn’t it? Brexit was voted in almost two years ago so there must surely be some evidence of change from when we were there, even if I had no idea what that change would look like.
On our first evening, we walked through Hyde Park and stayed a while in Speakers Corner. It was as vibrant and off-the-wall as I remember, a melting pot of orators and their beliefs standing on boxes propounding fundamentalist Catholic ideas, Muslim ideology, veganism and more. They all had crowds around them and all was calm. Free speech still alive and well, no change here. The same observation a few days later in Piccadilly Circus as a big group of Syrians and supporters were peacefully protesting against awful atrocities in Syria. People reaching out and expressing their views, life as normal in London.
As the week went on, we did however notice something we thought was a bit strange. When we did get around to asking people about Brexit, there was clear reluctance to talk about it. It left us with a strange sense either of people being tired of the topic, or maybe it was to do with who was asking: we were on the outside, we had already moved on and left the UK, what would be the point in discussing it with ‘the tourists’. I can comprehend both scenarios. In the almost two years since Brexit became the future, the only certainty for the person on the street seems to be uncertainty. What’s the point in talking about the unknown to the unknowing.
We had an amazing week and apart from one lovely afternoon with friends, we spent the rest of the week as tourists, getting through the list of sights and activities that we had promised to the kids. This was strange in itself, as this was our city for so long but in my final years there, I rarely made it into central London, what with a hectic job and two small kids. We were seeing the city again like in the early years of moving to London and it was as magical as ever.
And as for Brexit, the only real evidence of this that we could find was the many recruitment ads on shop windows, on London Bus and London Underground. One job site boasts 167,000 jobs in the UK currently and most seem to be service jobs in retail, care services, restaurants and the like. Maybe this is the evidence of Brexit as net migration to the UK has fallen since the vote; the foreigners who would normally take these jobs are in shorter supply.
However, I couldn’t help but notice that almost every shop assistant, waiter and hotel worker was speaking English as a second language. I love this about London, there is a place for everyone. It also makes me less concerned for the migrant lobby going forward; migrant labour is crucial to the thriving or even functioning of the giant British economy and any half-witted government knows this. Whether these migrants can manage to hold on to the same freedoms as they have pre-Brexit is of course the big question.
So there was comfort in the fact that little if anything had changed. And when walking around London, as we did for days, I was constantly impressed by the sheer might and life of the place, the amazing architecture, the huge buildings that scream of history and pride and self-assurance. I couldn’t help but think that whatever happens, Britain will be just fine.
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