EU Nationals can I ask ......

[Jampot1]

Firstly let me say this is a genuine, non goady thread, I really am just after your own personal view.

After Brexit what are your views of Britain and the British people, not the politicians, but just ordinary people. People like you, who are deciding what to eat tonight, when to do the ironing ...... just living an ordinary life. Do you hate us all, as some of the Press would have us believe? Does Brexit bother you, do you even think about it?
I’m asking because I was reading the news today and with everything going on with France I actually thought to myself “they hate us” and then I wondered do the ordinary members of the public in EU countries feel like that ?
Personally I’m just trying to get through life and the politics of other countries aren’t on my radar. But how do you genuinely feel?
If you do reply, please, would it be possible to say what country you’re from.

Don't hate the British people. Started to feel very unwelcome after the Brexit vote and I suffered some abuse because of that. I worked really hard here and built my life here but now don't really feel its my home anymore.
The press and the government were and still are treating EU as the enemy specially before Covid. It was very nasty, we were all treated as low skilled/low paid and not welcomed here (this also included non EU). My English is not great but I'm not low skilled and not low paid. I speak 3 languages, have 2 degrees, 1 masters and going for a PhD soon. The government behaved with hatred during the negations and so many people lost opportunities to experience life in other countries without needing a visa or even to go for Erasmus.
Now they are offering visas to help with their "low skilled/low paid" jobs. In a year they will have a one way visa system welcoming the whole world with their work visas but they will have no reciprocation for British citizens to work abroad.
We are planing to trial living in different European countries for about 2 to 3 years and then move our business there.

*meant negotiations ...
and please, forgive my other spelling mistakes...

I hate your government. Most of my criticism is not for the people it is for the government

So do I, and the total lack of decent opposition

I am British by birth but have dual citizenship and currently live in France. DH is French (also has dual citizenship) and he loathes the EU! There is plenty of euro-scepticism within the EU too.

I'm not sure how to describe it to be honest. It's baffling - I mean the actual vote was strange enough. (Considering there was no plan to put into place for people to know what they were actually voting for. I mean normally in referendums if out come of the 'yes' isn't clear then the country votes 'no'.) The reaction to what's happening is even odder, it's either utter denial or head in sand (that's aside of people how are exasperated by it.)

It's all a bit like watching a neighbor buy a new car with their partner. Then 'fixing' the engine by watching one YouTube video and the partner telling them not to because it's fine as it is. (All while ignoring/thinking they knew better than local the car mechanic tell them why it wasn't a good idea).

Then afterward saying that they just don't know the car isn't working like it used to claiming their lack of alternative research/listening is the same as being lied to.

Or saying the mechanic's fault, definitely something else other than what they did. Or just ignoring the problems and pretending nothings happened and getting utter fecked off with their partner for saying anything.

I don’t hate you.

I pity a lot of you. I think you were lead to vote for a lie by people who wouldn’t be affected and, now that the shit has hit the fan, it’s very clear that it’s the poor and working classes who are going to suffer the most.

For those who voted to this saying they know what they voted for- I pity you the most.

I think the government’s attitude to Northern Ireland is abominable and I have no idea why there isn’t more discussion around the impact of the NI Protocol.

UK by birth but haven't lived then since 1995 and now have dual (UK/Irish) nationality plus permanent residency in Portugal.

I must admit I thought the UK would pull back from the brink of the stupidest idea in history at the 11th hour. Now I just feel sad for the millions of people who were lied to by a small cartel of politicians and the media moguls who pull their strings.

I think Brexit was and is fucking stupid and the attitude from British politicians, media and members of the public that Ireland should just roll over and let the GFA go really irritated me - though I was amused to watch the shock that their little old colony wouldn't do as it was told.

Regular Britons, I have no opinion on. They're people like anyone else. Some gobshites, some decent. I pity the ones who voted remain and were dragged into the mess. Pity the Leavers too, for different reasons.

Oh and I also have greatly enjoyed watching the DUP thoroughly shaft themselves as they realise the 'mainland' politicians don't care one iota about them. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

I'm Italian and have lived here since I was 5, I don't hate anyone, but since Brexit I am a lot less emotionally attached to the UK. I love my home town (welcoming, left wing Brighton) but don't really feel like the rest of the country is "mine" if that makes sense.

If I didn't have a British husband/DC I would have emigrated after 2016 I think. I'm making the best of things and bringing the DC up as European as I can (making sure they learn Italian and visiting as often as we can).

My DM is an eu national and has lived nearly 2/3 of her life in the uk.
She has no ill feelings towards British people on a personal level but the government ect makes her feel uneasy.
Thankfully she doesn't have a foreign accent so people haven't been directly unkind to her but she often hears some vile comments from people who think that she is British.
I myself have recently been told to get out of the Country and i also hear the same comments as my DM although I have dual nationality, I've always lived in England

I love most Brits but I do feel a strong dislike for my husbands family members who supported, and crucially continue to support Brexit despite knowing how it’s negatively impacted our lives. It’s hard not to take it personally. For other Brits I feel love and to some extent pity as I now have so many more rights than them and a lot of them actively fought against that. I get annoyed at the misinformation in the press, and I don’t like it when Brits criticise eu politicians (I there’s an idiom about sorting out your own backyard or something!)

I feel nervous about speaking my language with my dc when out just in case but am also very proud of our multilingualism.

I'm Dutch. No, I don't hate you, and I'd say most Dutch people are probably indifferent about the UK. For (most of) us the Brexit storm has blown over and there isn't much to it.

For me it mostly just all seems a bit sad. It seems that all the systems that should make life livable and give focus to more enjoyable things are shaky, whether it be the NHS, democracy (limiting right to protest, etc.), infrastructure, fuel and food availability, energy prices, etc. That uncertainty seems to make everyone enormously political and polarised in everyday life when they likely would have given politics little thought outside of elections ten/twenty years ago. The instability of the systems pushes people to the extremes and makes Trumpian figures and authoritarian narratives seem highly appealing as it at least offers a stability of sorts. I mostly view Brexit and subsequent election results in that framework.

In the EU we're experiencing some of this as well but it doesn't seem to take a hold of our lives in the same sense. There's this danger of everything becoming political. Press, and IMO especially social media play into this, and it seems more extreme in the UK. I read widely and it often appears the UK press report more on the EU (and especially outnumbered in opinion pieces) than within the EU itself, reporting about the UK is also far less in comparison. It's not as if what is being reported in the UK is especially informative either, where I can name your PM and most cabinet ministers, and even name some of the spouses you probably don't know the name of my PM and/or the party they represent.

You'd think conversation in the UK would now move inward but that doesn't seem to glue eyeballs to screens and get users to engage with rage in the same way, it feels like the EU is just click bait to the UK now even stories unrelated are to it the EU gets shoehorned in and I don't see that changing anytime soon, unfortunately.

I'm British but have been in Italy since 1994. DH is Italian. DD has dual citizenship.
I work in both countries, pay tax in both. Own property in the UK not Italy.

I hate the ignorance, the xenophobia, the "if you don't like it here, go home" attitude. In either of the two countries. And there is a LOT of it in both.

The Brexit vote shocked me. To the core. And you can't even blame the successive govts for that. That was the people. They wanted it. They got it.

The blinkered belief that the UK govt's approach to Covid is astonishing. You only have to read threads on here trying to perpetuate the "We got it right" myth to wonder how anybody who has ever watched even one news broadcast when the PM speaks could ever think that.

And everything the ever wise @EileenGC said, basically.

I’m Swedish and don’t hate the British, but I strongly dislike the people who voted for Brexit. I definitely feel unwelcome in the North Western town I live in from time to time and have had a few negative remarks made when I have spoken Swedish on the phone whilst out and about. So I don’t do that anymore. I didn’t feel like that whenI lived in London though, but there were Swedes everywhere there so people were more accepting.

I have had enough of the UK though and planning on moving back home next summer. I don’t think I will miss the country itself (certainly not the politics) but I have met some lovely people here who I will always think fondly of.

Also Swedish. I don’t hate anyone who voted for Brexit, including my German mother in law who has a problem with too many foreigners arriving here. (Yes, I know…) But there were points when I, after 18 years living and paying tax etc in England, felt unwelcome. I still feel unwelcome now at times but my accent is so faint now and I’ve integrated myself so well into British society that I think I have been accepted.
I’m really bored of people finding out I’m Swedish though and joking “you haven’t been kicked out yet then?” The application process to stay was just quite sad to me. My husband is here, I have two kids who are British nationals and I own property here. My entire life is here, as I now know it.
I wish we were still part of the EU. It saddens me.
But of course I don’t hate anyone - they all have their reasons for voting however they did.

Also Irish, lived in the UK until around the time of the Brexit vote, know quite a lot of people who lived there from other EU countries.

I think what's interesting to me is the UK I lived in until the vote was sort of portrayed by the government and the media as an incredibly progressive place - the Olympics, statements the government made, the media.And it never really chimed with some of my English extended family who lived in the home counties and grumbled about Polish people - I always felt that actually, a lot of the UK wasn't really publicly represented in that way, and there were a lot of people with dissenting views getting more and more alienated. I also found it striking how even in the most 'cosmopolitan' educated places people had no idea about the role of the EU, and no personal identity as people with EU citizenship, however much the 'remainer' narrative may have sparked that. They saw 'Europe' as the mainland, thought it was odd I viewed myself as European as well as Irish. MEPs in Ireland are prominent politicians, or can be, often moving from people ministers to MEPs and back again. MEPs in the UK were always a joke.

So it is sad to me that the vote has heralded in a chance for a lot of people who were always there to express some unpleasant viewpoints more publicly. Many, many friends of my acquaintance faced racism, comments, attacks. I know lots of people who decided they were not actually accepted the way they thought.

I feel deeply frustrated at the way the government has sidelined Northern Ireland, and the way so many people feel disdain. I intensely dislike the category of British people I disliked before - the xenophobic, racist ones. But they're not a majority. As a country though, I do believe the UK has become more insular, and I feel a certain amount of pity because of that. But not hate

Brexit made me uneasy. I don't trust the government , or the people really. Right now I still have rights , but will it stay that way? That layer of safety is gone now. I did get some abuse and jokes and "banter" after the referendum which didn't help.

I don't hate brits though. Some are twats, some are lovely, some are somewhere in between.

Someone at work recently asked in a meeting if I find x harder because I'm not English. I've been there 7 years,my performance reviews are excellent. She was just being a twat. I don't hate it, but I hated being singled out , I hated everyone looking at me for an answer, i hated being othered and the very public reminder to everyone that I'm not quite like everyone else.

Meh.

Well im irish so not sure if you want my opinion but i think uk is (was) great!, a land of opportunity, with healthcare . I lived there for years. Never had a day without work. So easy to find work in london.

Now though, im glad to be back in ireland and still part of europe.

Sad britain left EU. That is the old school we are an Empiiiiire thinking :-/

My parents are European immigrants & the vast majority of my friends are 2nd gen. A good number of our families voted Brexit which is ironic. I wasn't shocked by Brexit.

@Jampot1

Firstly let me say this is a genuine, non goady thread, I really am just after your own personal view. After Brexit what are your views of Britain and the British people, not the politicians, but just ordinary people. People like you, who are deciding what to eat tonight, when to do the ironing ...... just living an ordinary life. Do you hate us all, as some of the Press would have us believe? Does Brexit bother you, do you even think about it? I’m asking because I was reading the news today and with everything going on with France I actually thought to myself “they hate us” and then I wondered do the ordinary members of the public in EU countries feel like that ? Personally I’m just trying to get through life and the politics of other countries aren’t on my radar. But how do you genuinely feel? If you do reply, please, would it be possible to say what country you’re from.

EU nationals isn't a thing because it isn't a country!!

I don't think our right wing press care much for getting facts right, let's face it, getting people wound up about the nasty french and Germans or whatever is the laziest easiest thing that sells papers. They probably have some algorithm for it these days, stick in 'Macron' 'French' 'EU' 'Brexit' and 'foreigners' with a crass xenophobic photo and they probably get a good years worth of slightly different EU bashing articles!

@Vallmo47

Also Swedish. I don’t hate anyone who voted for Brexit, including my German mother in law who has a problem with too many foreigners arriving here. (Yes, I know…) But there were points when I, after 18 years living and paying tax etc in England, felt unwelcome. I still feel unwelcome now at times but my accent is so faint now and I’ve integrated myself so well into British society that I think I have been accepted. I’m really bored of people finding out I’m Swedish though and joking “you haven’t been kicked out yet then?” The application process to stay was just quite sad to me. My husband is here, I have two kids who are British nationals and I own property here. My entire life is here, as I now know it. I wish we were still part of the EU. It saddens me. But of course I don’t hate anyone - they all have their reasons for voting however they did.

Our lovely Spanish neighbours moved cos of Brexit, I'm sad about that. I am not as equal as you about people having reasons to vote as they did, as I think some reasons are better than others - not being xenophobes is one of them.

@SionnachRua

Oh and I also have greatly enjoyed watching the DUP thoroughly shaft themselves as they realise the 'mainland' politicians don't care one iota about them. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

I felt the same way when I saw that.

Though the funniest clip I saw was some retired couple having just bought a place in Spain, and who came back to to the UK to vote for Brexit, puce with outrage in their interview that their right to remain in Spain wasn't necessarily secure post-Brexit. Their plaintive wails of "But we are British!! Why should we need visas and permits to live in Spain!!"

And that, I felt, summed up a lot of the British sentiment I've seen - that to them they will never be the 'foreigner' or 'immigrant' no matter where they go because they are British and more than likely, white. And I can't tell whether that's just ingrained colonialism still at play or just unfounded superiority.

"And that, I felt, summed up a lot of the British sentiment I've seen - that to them they will never be the 'foreigner' or 'immigrant' no matter where they go because they are British and more than likely, white. And I can't tell whether that's just ingrained colonialism still at play or just unfounded superiority."
Yes the arrogance (and stupidity!) of some is unbelievable. There is a reason why in Australia and New Zealand they use the term "whinging Poms".

@windmill26

"And that, I felt, summed up a lot of the British sentiment I've seen - that to them they will never be the 'foreigner' or 'immigrant' no matter where they go because they are British and more than likely, white. And I can't tell whether that's just ingrained colonialism still at play or just unfounded superiority." Yes the arrogance (and stupidity!) of some is unbelievable. There is a reason why in Australia and New Zealand they use the term "whinging Poms".

In Ireland, we just have a website: arethebritsatitagain.org/