‘EU vote result and rise in xenophobia have forced us to quitWales’
THIS couple have sold their home, packed their belongings and are leaving Wales.
And they say it’s because of a rise in xenophobia in Brexit Britain.
John Sam Jones said he and his German partner of 30 years, Jupp Korsten, have decided to move to Germany after feeling “uncomfortable” in his boyhood home in Wales.
Mr Jones said: “I feel quite betrayed by the vote in Wales which has caused me a lot of heartache. My family have lived in Barmouth for over 300 years. We are one of the oldest families in the town. There is an underlying xenophobia that leaves my husband and me feeling uncomfortable.
“After 30 years he suddenly feels that the atmosphere has changed. When he said ‘Let’s go and live in Germany’, I said ‘Fine’.”
The couple run a B&B in Barmouth, but will move at the end of this month.
Mr Jones, a writer and former teacher, said he can “get by” in German and is confident of becoming reasonably fluent within a few months. Mr Korsten is a former German lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University. The couple married last year and had entered a civil partnership in 2006.
Mr Jones will get German citizenship within three years and is willing to forego his British citizenship if he has to.
Both hope to get work in Germany and possibly volunteer with Syrian refugees who have moved to Mr Korsten’s home town near Cologne.
Mr Jones, 57, is also in the middle of writing a book.
The former mayor of Barmouth said: “I have got a novel on the go at the moment. It’s quite exciting.”
They have sold their £395,000 sixbedroom B&B and will be leaving at the end of the month taking their sheepdogs Wash and Nel with them.
Mr Korsten, 61, said: “We are packing up. It’s all fixed. The trigger was the Brexit vote. I have been in Britain for over 30 years and I was very comfortable and happy here. The whole debate around Brexit poisoned the atmosphere completely with people coming out against EU migrants.”
He said that one French friend had returned home after a queue-jumper she admonished in Cheshire exclaimed that he wouldn’t be told off by “a bloody foreigner”.
Mr Korsten said another Italian woman married to a British man with two children is now thinking of getting residency but first has to fill a 90-page questionnaire which also asks her to state all the times she has left the country.
Mr Korsten said he was “very disappointed” that Wales had not followed Scotland’s example and feared the growth of right-wing nationalism.