1 in 4 UK voters; or some 4,3 million people, feel strongly that I should not be allowed to live and/or work in their country. They would get out of Europe and back to their empire days if they could. Close the borders. On question time last week several of the guests went on about how in the UK they tend to get it right on immigration and “do better” than most of Europe but I don’t see that. I see a nation of people that don’t speak their minds honestly because in private they vote for the borders to be closed and a return to the relative isolationism they had in the seventies. Today I see the UK on the news in roundups with countries overtaken by right wing nationalists. Perhaps we Europeans aren’t the right kind of foreigners for the British to tolerate. They’d simply rather have their grateful former commonwealth people filling the jobs they won’t do in preference over Caucasians with entitlement that sometimes can’t be identified as the underclass until they open their mouths?

But what of the 34,4 million of voting age that couldn’t be arsed to vote at all? Do any of them have homes or holiday in my home country? My country; that due to the international banking crisis created by the CITY’s ways of working and the subsequent bail out insisted upon by BRITAIN, is suffering a meltdown. My country; that now has the right price again with the pound exchange, as all that euro business was making pints on the beach a bit pricy for them. Meant they might have to be sober for a minute or two of their erstwhile uninterrupted debauched spectacle of a holiday.
Of course, my country is currently being led by a worthless excuse of a self-interested politician; voted into power by the apathy of the majority rather than by any real desire of anyone that he should lead. Excuse me – lead he does not – he persists and refuses to give explanations and does what he’s told by foreign (to my country’s) interests. Even so, I recognise that my country would be a thousand times worse off without the positive influence of the EU on its laws, consumer protection, freedom of movement, civil rights, women’s rights …

I am a staunch believer in the EU; that enabled me to come to the UK when my own country did not offer me any prospects for work, enabling me to fend for myself. Fend for myself because I did not receive a single hand out or council or government assistance. Fend for myself because I am in a place by myself that is completely foreign and unlike any of the marketing the BBC exports and takes quite a lot of getting used to.
So after seven years of permanent residence and watching governments say “British jobs for British people” & millions marching in London, the impatient voters of Britain have moved on to a party that overtly supports the isolationism idea and has proven it will not shy from obstructing Europe. So now I wonder what can a person like do? Where can a person like me go? Home to be unemployed until I starve under the right wing? To France? To Denmark?

* (estimate based on the 2011 census and last reported turnout stats)