Luvvies leave for Europe?

Another old friend in the Observer today as all intelligent and right-mindedfolk get ready to leave the narrow and racist post-Brexit UK and re-establish in Europe:

Brexit fuels brain drain as skilled Britons head to the EU

The study says that migration from the UK to EU countries has increased by about 30% compared to pre-Brexit numbers. Britons living in other EU countries who decided to obtain EU member state passports as well as their UK ones had increased by more than 500% overall, and by 2,000% in Germany....Dr Daniel Auer, a co-author of the report, said: “These increases in numbers are of a magnitude that you would expect when a country is hit by a major economic or political crisis.”

And Europe knows a bit about major crises. What sort of real numbers are we talking about though?

There are now about 1.2 million British citizens living in the EU, between 120,000 and 150,000 of which are in Germany [bit vague]. In the four years since the Brexit referendum [bit naughty because the figures only go up to 2019?] , 31,600 Brits have been granted dual British/German citizenship: 2019 saw 14,600 naturalisations compared to 622 in 2015

So far, peanuts, but the Observer spots a trend: 

Brexit has begun a steady drain of the most talented and productive people to the continent....A British academic in his 40s, who is married with a young family – and who migrated in July 2016 [!] – told researchers: “The referendum happened and we immediately changed our minds about buying a house in Bristol. Our whole emigration decision hung on the referendum result.”..

That, and the date of the findings (2019) might give us pause -- that was when there was all the uncertainty and panic, and no covid-19. I wonder what the 2020 figures will be. And how many EU people came the other way? This week's Briefings for Britain also deconstructs the story

There is not always greener grass,of course:

Some struggled to find a job. “I have still not found work, which is not what I expected […] The cost of the move in personal and financial terms is always difficult to foresee, and I’m starting to wonder if I underestimated the risk involved,” said a British IT worker

 Meanwhile, J Rayner ( 'the Observer’s restaurant critic and a feature writer') er... writes:

this first report from the National Food Strategy...was received across the world of food production and policy [who they? See below for a clue] with at best eye-rolling and at worst exasperation. It is the product of grubby politics, includes worrying proposals on post-Brexit trade policy, muddled thinking on the causes of poverty and risks wasting a golden opportunity to answer one of the most important challenges of the 21st century: how we feed ourselves.

Gove had just the person [to lead the Strategy]: his close friend Henry Dimbleby. He started out as a journalist, then moved into management consultancy, before founding the healthier fast food chain Leon. In 2013, when Gove was education secretary, Dimbleby had published a review into school food provision. But, for all his diligent work in the sector, he has no qualifications in food policy... [not like Rayner then?]...Dimbleby spent the night of the 2016 Brexit referendum at Gove’s house and had voted Leave [definitely not like Rayner]

He acknowledges the impact of poverty and proposes short-term fixes such as extending free school meals, he fails to recognise that systematic inequality is caused by a failure of long-term government economic policy. [does the Observer?] But then that would be to criticise Downing Street. Likewise, he regularly refers to the “freedoms” offered by leaving the EU, without considering whether the Brexit he voted for will blight the lives of the impoverished children he clearly cares about so deeply....it is the section on post-Brexit trade policy that is most troubling. It reads as if he has taken dictation direct from government. He robustly defends the government’s recent vote against the amendment to the agriculture bill, introduced by MP Neil Parish, which would have prevented the ratification of any trade agreements allowing the importation of food not produced to standards of production and welfare equivalent to those in the UK.

Last week, Defra officials were quietly telling interested parties [ah!] not to waste too much energy on Dimbleby’s findings and to focus instead on lobbying over the contents of the white paper.