The hills are alive... with the sound of Brits flying the coop

When the most English man in England decides he’s Austrian, maybe Brexit hasn’t been the saviour of our national identity that was promised.

- FEMI OLUWOLE

Fry has adopted Austrian citizenship under a law that grants the option to the descendants of Austrians who were persecuted in the Holocaust. He says it also allows him to his “tongue out at Brexit”. Given the number of people and businesses that have left the UK since the 2016 vote, has Brexit now turned Brits against Britain?

Since the referendum, hundreds of thousands of Brits have applied for EU citizenship and more than 100,000 have been granted it. The bulk of this was, of course, for Irish citizenship. It exposed a great irony of Brexit: it was meant to be about freedom, yet without EU citizenship, we’re trapped.

We used to have the automatic right to live and work in 31 countries (EU, plus the single market countries of Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein). Now, we only have that right in the UK. I don’t know about you but I prefer voluntary love to forced marriage. Stripping Brits of their choice to live elsewhere has not made us love the UK more.