r/brexit

Brexit didn’t create all the problems young people now face, but renewing close ties with Europe will give us so many opportunities

"I was 14 when the UK voted to leave the EU. Too young to vote, but not too young to understand that a decision was being made that would affect the rest of my life.

In many ways, Brexit was my political awakening. It taught me that politics matters, because decisions made by people in power can change your future before you’ve even been given a say.

Ten years later, my generation is living with that decision. We lost the automatic right to live, work and study freely across 27 other countries. Opportunities previous generations took for granted are now more complicated, more expensive or completely out of reach. But with a new prime minister who has a recorded history of stating that we should rejoin the EU, perhaps we can start to hope.

If you have money, many of these barriers can be overcome. You are better able to cope with the extra costs, paperwork and bureaucracy involved in moving abroad. Someone from a wealthy family can afford more expensive routes to studying or living overseas. But what about everyone else?

Freedom of movement wasn’t just a nice perk for people who could already afford to travel. For working-class young people like me, it meant opportunity. It was the possibility of studying in Paris, working in Berlin, or falling in love in Barcelona and building a life there. It was about experiencing different cultures, learning languages and feeling part of something bigger.

Young people are already facing a difficult economic future. Housing is increasingly unaffordable, wages haven’t kept pace with costs and many of us wonder whether we’ll ever have the security our parents got to enjoy. The median income for those aged 25 and under has not increased for two decades. We are becoming the first generation in modern times to seriously contemplate having less than our parents.

Brexit didn’t create all of these problems. But putting up economic barriers against our largest neighbouring market certainly hasn’t helped. We were told Brexit would create opportunities. For many working-class young people, it did the opposite. I think often of my friend: a British citizen who married a German, only to face endless challenges just so they could live together. And countless young people in creative industries have had their careers stifled through lack of access to the continent.

This is why Andy Burnham’s approach to Europe is so important.

The prime minister must start removing some of the walls Brexit put up. Make it easier for young people to study and work in Europe, restore opportunities for musicians, artists and young creatives, and make sure those opportunities aren’t reserved for people wealthy enough to pay their way around the obstacles.

But closer ties aren’t enough. My generation wants the UK to rejoin the EU. So my message to Burnham is simple: be brave.

Don’t become another prime minister whose time in office is cut short trying to find another way to make Brexit work. My generation didn’t get a vote last time. Give us one now and I believe we’ll vote for our future in Europe. And this time, give 16- and 17-year-olds a vote too. If they’re old enough to live with the consequences of a decision for the rest of their lives, they’re old enough to have a say in it.

We young people have grown up connected to the rest of Europe and the world. We don’t see someone in France, Germany, Poland or Spain as being on the other side of some great divide. They’re our friends, colleagues and partners.

Politicians worry about young people becoming disengaged from politics. Perhaps they should ask why."

'the3million is ready to take the government to court over a Home Office practice: deciding there was a mistake in the initial grant of status, then simply allowing the status and rights of EU citizens and their family members to fall off a cliff - with no decision, no proportionality assessment and no right of appeal. 

In many cases the Home Office is actually wrong to say there was a mistake! So people whose status was properly granted are now fighting not to lose it - this is a clear breach of the Withdrawal Agreement."

The problem

Millions of EU citizens made the UK their home before Brexit, and under the EU Settlement Scheme we were told our rights would be protected. For a growing number of people that promise is being broken.

The Home Office has begun telling people that the status it granted them years ago was apparently granted by mistake - that they apparently never qualified in the first place. Nobody is accused of lying. It is simply that a caseworker looking at the same papers today would reach a different conclusion. And when that happens, the Home Office does not take the status away: it just lets the status run out instead.

That seemingly technical difference is the whole problem. If the Home Office decides you were correctly granted status but have since stopped qualifying, it has to write to you, hear your side, weigh up whether taking your status away is proportionate to your circumstances, and give you a decision you can appeal. If it decides you never qualified, you get none of that. In this new practice we are seeing, there is no decision, nobody weighing up your circumstances, and there is nothing to appeal. Your status stays valid until the day it expires - and then it is gone, and you are considered to be in the UK unlawfully.

Now here is the really worrying bit - this policy is being applied to people where there was no mistake when the original status was granted. The person met the requirements, and they were properly granted status under the EU Settlement Scheme. Many years later the Home Office is now saying the grant was by mistake, even in cases where it was not. 

In the House of Lords last November, Baroness Ludford described the Home Office letting someone's status "simply ... expire - to fall off a cliff" as a practice that is "frankly, sneaky". Baroness Ladford made it clear that "when it falls off a cliff, there are no rights and there is no due process." 

The Independent Monitoring Authority - the watchdog set up after Brexit to oversee citizens’ rights - has told the Home Office that this policy may be incompatible with the Withdrawal Agreement, and that the people affected are not given a clear and direct right of appeal.

The government has not accepted the criticism. The practice continues, and it is happening to more people.'

Another vulnerable British long term resident in Sweden is being deported.

He had his withdrawal agreement settled status application submitted on time (by family as he has dementia) But it was rejected as Sweden has had a very high bar for the paperwork trail. Far higher than the rest of Europe

> Of the 14,233 applications made by the end of 2024 to remain in Sweden, 27.5% (3,918) of applications have been refused, three times higher than any other member state and considerably higher than the EU average of between 3% and 4%.

This is another high profile case of a dementia patient being deported from Sweden. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65196484

The generation causing that only has a short future to endure what they done to their children and grandchildren.