It’s just over six years since we made the very difficult decision to leave the UK. At the time, people assumed Brexit was mostly about paperwork and wouldn’t really change their lives. But to us, that Brexit deadline was a door about to slam shut, leaving me on the opposite side from my husband and kids. If we didn’t move before it came down, my children and husband had an escape route but, as the only one in the family who only had a British passport, I would be landlocked.
And I had been afraid for a long time already — at least five years — of the anti-immigrant direction England was taking, dragging Scotland along in its wake, pulling us kicking and screaming out of the EU. I began to imagine a future insular UK. But even in my wildest dreams, I didn’t think it could get this bad. In my worst nightmares, Farage as a potential prime minister was still a joke. The idea that abortion rights might be up for debate, or that fundamentalist Christianity could ever make inroads into mainstream politics, felt utterly impossible. And yet here we are. The irony is that when I voiced much smaller fears back then, I was invariably told I was overreacting.
I remember once, when Anna was in Primary 3, the children were asked to bring in their favourite book to share with the class. Most of the others turned up with well-thumbed copies of Roald Dahl or Julia Donaldson, the sort of titles every teacher knows by heart and every child has at least seen before.
Anna, though, chose a Danish book — Lotte kan nemlig cykle, a big green hardback her dad often read to her at bedtime. Her teacher picked it up, turned it over in her hands, and realised with surprise that she couldn’t read a word of it. Instead of putting it aside or hurrying on, she was fascinated. She asked Anna to stand up in front of the class and tell everyone the story they would never otherwise be able to read themselves.
And Anna did. Page by page, she translated as she went, telling the story in English, six years old and standing there with quiet confidence. The class sat in rapt silence, wide-eyed, and the teacher stood moved, almost in awe of this small, ordinary-looking child who suddenly revealed such an extraordinary, hidden side to herself. Afterwards, a few classmates crowded round her, asking questions “Can you really read that?” “Can you teach me?” and Anna came home glowing, proud of herself in a way that made my heart swell.
The teacher rang to tell me about it. She said it was one of those magical classroom moments — the kind that make you think a teacher has glimpsed your child properly for who they are.
But even as I basked in the warmth of that memory, I felt a creeping fear. Because I knew how quickly things can change. I was scared we were on the cusp of a time when the reaction to that very same book might be the opposite — not wonder, but suspicion. I could too easily imagine a teacher leaning in with hushed tones, telling Anna to put it back in her bag, explaining it was inappropriate, bustling her off to the library to choose an English book instead. Not because it was wrong, but because it revealed something they thought best kept hidden — her “dirty secret.” I even imagined myself pre-empting it, maybe suggesting she should leave that book at home.
That thought chilled me. I couldn’t bear to be around for the moment when the genuine delight and admiration in her teacher’s eyes might be replaced by discomfort or disapproval. Because at its heart, what I feared was this: that my children would one day be pressured to conceal half of who they are. To shrink away from their foreign names, perhaps dropping their dad's surname from their CVs, to tuck their 2nd passports out of sight, to pretend their bilingualism didn’t exist. I was afraid that what should be celebrated as a gift would instead be treated as something shameful.
So we left.
When I look back, I realise I was one of the first to go, but many friends followed in our wake.
The Polish shops in our town told the story more clearly than the politicians ever could. Once vibrant places filled with chatter, with shelves stacked high with breads and sausages and fancy sweets, they started closing down one by one. There was one corner shop I especially remember: we used to buy white eggs there every year for Easter. It was always warm, with the bustle of people chatting in Polish while children tugged at their mothers’ coats. It felt welcoming, colourful, alive. And then one day it was gone, replaced by an empty storefront with a faded, sad “To Let” sign.
It felt like watching colour drain from the streets, a quiet exodus made visible.
For me it isn’t just theoretical. I have brown family members, and very close friends, who don’t have the luxury of hiding their difference. They can’t soften their names, or even tuck their foreignness away in a passport drawer. They are the ones most exposed as Britain grows harder and angrier, and I ache with the helpless wish to scoop them all up, evacuate them to the safety of my annex, and show them how much I care.
I think about them every time the news mentions another rise in support for the Reform Party even in Scotland. Back when I left, Nigel Farage was still a pantomime villain north of the border, laughed at and jeered whenever he dared set foot there and chased back south within hours. I comforted myself with that. But now, even Scotland isn’t immune. The things I once believed impossible have quietly become plausible.
Saturday broke something in me. I sat in my living room in Denmark and watched footage of 100,000 people marching through London, openly chanting pro-fascist slogans. London of all places — a city I love, where I have always felt at home precisely because you can’t walk the streets without hearing a dozen languages and seeing the wonderful, beautiful range of humanity in all its colours.
I knew Britain had racism, I grew up with sectarianism and racism. But it got better as I moved into adulthood. Schools began to mix, people married across religions and races without the looks they would have got when I was a child. One of my best friend’s weddings was officiated by a priest and an imam together, and it was a truly wonderful day. I felt filled with hope for the future that I would soon bring my kids into.
To see that hope so thoroughly eclipsed, to see London, my London, overrun by chants that belonged to another, darker world, was devastating.
What made me shiver most were the undertones: the unmistakable echo of American fundamentalism. Religion weaponised against outsiders. Chants and rhetoric that sounded imported straight from US culture wars. Musk on live link calling for violence in the streets. Seriously?
It brought back a conversation I had this summer with one of Thomas’s old friends — Danish, a professor at an American university, raising Asian children in the US. Sitting at our coffee table over dessert, he told me why universities there are facing such a furious backlash.
“It isn’t only politics,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s resentment. Ordinary people who had no chance of reaching the academic level for scholarships watch others succeed where they themselves were excluded. And instead of celebrating those successes — realising they too need those doctors, those scientists, even if they can’t become them — they’re so angry they simply want to bar others from what was barred from them.”
It struck me as such a sad, human response — but also such a dangerous one. And when I watched the London demonstration, I recognised those same undertones. Not just a desire to close borders, but to close minds. Universities in the UK are already on their knees financially before we go in this direction.
All of this circles back to empathy. To me, empathy is the single most important human trait. It is what allows us to look at someone different and see, not a rival, but another human being.
The far right thrives by eroding empathy. It tells people their neighbours are competitors, their colleagues parasites, strangers invaders. It feeds on bitterness until there is no space left for compassion. We see that same absence of empathy playing out horrifically in Gaza, where entire populations are dehumanised until their suffering becomes tolerable background noise.
That is the opposite of what I wanted for my children. They have grown up proud of being bilingual, proud of their mixed heritage, proud of their passports, their friends from all over the world and their complicated family tree. They meet difference with curiosity, not suspicion. They want to know the people who are not like them, deeply and genuinely.
Leaving hasn’t spared me the grief. I still feel tied to Britain. I may be Scottish, but I also have a son, his partner, and their (Asian) flatmate — who I have considered one of my own kids for ten years — living in London. Every time I see news of marches like Saturday’s, my thoughts go straight to them.
And yet, over this summer, as I watched small, angry white men pitifully painting roundabouts in protest instead of doing something positive about the real problems facing the world, I felt like I no longer recognised the UK. The passport I still carry feels more like an artefact than a document of belonging.
The Britain of the 1990s and 2000s was flawed, often frustrating, sometimes cruel. But it was also a place where I believed empathy had a foothold, where openness and equality could still become the norm. I guess deep down I thought that was the country I was leaving behind temporarily to give it time to sort itself out back in 2019.
The one I see now feels like something else entirely. I can see no hope for a kinder Britain in the next decade. I fear it will have to sink much lower before it comes out the other side and I am glad my children won’t have to live through that descent.
