Exchange of the week Life after Brexit
To the Financial Times
Every day I open my copy of the Pink ’Un expecting the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up as I read the latest instalment from the FT House of Brexit Horrors, but imagine my surprise when I read yesterday’s headlines: “Goldman in £1.2bn property deal” and “Investor appetite defies Brexit”. Some of your journalists are reporting that Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank have both just signed new 25-year leases in the City, with Goldman’s head of international operations quoted as saying: “The development of Plumtree Court and our signing of a long-term lease demonstrates our continued commitment to London.” So much, then, for chief executive Lloyd Blankfein’s tweet last year that he prefers Frankfurt.
Have all concerned not read the script? Neither apparently have skilled immigrants, as you go on to report that “UK businesses should find it easier to recruit skilled workers from outside Europe after applications under a visa scheme in August matched the available places for the first time since last November”. Come on FT, don’t let me down. I need my daily fix of ghoulish excitement. Stephen Hazell-smith, Penshurst, Kent
To The Guardian
Next time you refer to “UK citizens in the EU”, please don’t put us in brackets as you did in your otherwise excellent editorial on a no-deal Brexit – as if our Eu-based livelihoods somehow matter less than those of EU citizens in the UK. I’m one of the 1.8 million British citizens living in mainland Europe; no deal will have a devastating impact on us. And it is our government, not our EU hosts, that will be stripping us of our right to continue living and working here.
Much as we’d love to hide on 30 March 2019, hoping no one here will notice that we have become “third country nationals” (who may or may not be granted a work permit, depending on whether a local can do our job), alas, that’s not going to work. Which is why we need you to continue writing about the 1.8 million British citizens (60% of whom were not allowed to vote in the referendum) who will be left with no rights, no representation nor any means of redress if “our own” British government continues down the path to no deal. Georgina Tate, Brussels, Belgium