Why I moved from Britain to Australia. By Louise Perry in The Australian.
Louise migrated to Australia last week, with her husband and their two little boys.
So if we’re not “excited” about our move, then why did we do it? …
It’s certainly true that healthcare is better in Australia, and salaries are higher, since Australia is now a significantly richer country than Britain, the two countries having diverged following the 2008 financial crisis. Britain used to be the aspirational destination for ambitious young Australians — including my parents — but that is no longer true, and Australia has been merrily brain-draining Britain for some time now. Our move is perfectly rational in economic terms.
But there is another reason for leaving, one that is more difficult to say out loud. I’m not only unhappy with how things are right now in Britain, I’m worried that they’re set to get a whole lot worse. I started thinking seriously about leaving Britain in 2024, spurred by two things:
- My direct experience of the dire state of NHS maternity services.
- My unease about the rise of Muslim sectarianism in politics. This was the year in which the “Gaza Five”, a group of politicians who ran on an Islamopopulist platform, were elected to parliament. These candidates ignore the liberal universalist ideals that other British politicians are committed to, instead making explicit appeals to ethno-religious solidarity. Meanwhile, the Pakistani Muslim-dominated cities of Birmingham, Oldham and Bradford have seen multiple cases of arson attacks on politicians’ cars in the lead-up to elections, as well as tyre slashing and threatening messages scratched into the paintwork. Violence is a feature of elections in Pakistan. Is it so very surprising that we are now seeing the same disorder in Pakistani-majority areas of Britain? Paying close attention to current affairs is part of my job, and it became apparent to me that British politics was changing, and not for the better.
I sought out scholarly opinion on the matter, and came across the work of David Betz, a professor of war studies at King’s College London.
He uses established models and ideas within the discipline of war studies to predict that Britain and France are the Western countries most likely to experience the outbreak of a violent civil conflict that would be fought primarily along ethnic lines. Such conflicts would be the product of economic stress, lost political legitimacy, indigestible levels of immigration from culturally distant places, and a sense of “downgrade” among a native population that feels itself to be losing power and status. Britain is, says Betz, “explosively configured”. …
“(T)he steady trickle of retired police chiefs, former civil servants and security officials privately voicing concern indicates that the thesis is apprehended even if never formally endorsed.””
It’s possible these predictions are wrong. But nothing that has happened since 2024 has made me feel more confident about Britain’s trajectory. Since then, we have seen more outbreaks of race rioting and increased political instability. And, all the while, experts warn that the government is borrowing and spending way beyond its means, with welfare spending exceeding income tax revenue. This economic pain will be intensified by the loss to emigration of both the wealthy and the youthful which seems to be under way. A poorer Britain is hardly likely to be a more peaceful Britain.
I realise I’m contributing to this potential doom loop by leaving. Anecdotally, a lot of my peers are thinking along the same lines. A message I received from a friend over the weekend: “every cell of my body wants to emigrate.” If Britons with the means to leave start to do so at scale, then a crisis of mass emigration could be at hand. …
We wouldn’t have left if it weren’t for our children.