There Are Just Two Choices Now.

The, well let’s call it the compromise of Theresa May and her soft-Brexit has gone down the tubes, leaving two powerful sides that both agree on only one thing – not to hand over 39 billion pounds to Brussels. One by bringing a hard Brexit and the other by adhering to the European Union. While we would like to point out the bleedin’ obvious (sic), let us here just consider how these two courses would separately affect those Britons living in Spain – the 300,000 or so legally and the many more besides (who knows, who cares?).  

The Britons living in the rest of the EU-27 and the Europeans living in the UK, maybe five million or so between them, will no doubt harbour a similar opinion to the majority – but inexplicably not all – of those Brits who live here (or they certainly should).

No deal or a full U-turn, the latter option no doubt prefaced by a ‘Peoples Vote’ (in which we expatriates will in many cases not be invited, once again, to participate).

Our privileges here as fellow-Europeans were under threat from a Soft Brexit, but there was evidence of conciliation between the foreign ministries. We would have lost free movement and probably our voting rights (such as they are). Some jobs would have gone here and there. We might have had to get Spanish driving licences and perhaps other useful paperwork we should already have obtained anyway. In certain cases, possibly, some of us might have been deported as ‘not wanted on voyage’.

But now, the game is truly afoot. A hard Brexit: a slap in the face to Europe, or a ‘Peoples Vote’ (with, one must expect, the happy conclusion of a win for the Remainers). For the British living in Spain, that’s a frightening choice which others will be making for us, ignorant and uninterested as they most certainly are in our fate.