"The British Exodus" is a lie (Here’s What’s Really Happening)

Emigration is stable...and has been for decades

There’s been a lot of talk about record numbers of people leaving “Broken Britain” recently , especially young people and millionaires. I don’t know about you but I don’t think I can hear the term “Broken Britain” Anymore. It’s become a kind of national refrain. A phrase once deployed by the Conservative Party in 2007 to score political points is now echoed in tweets, comment sections, video titles, article headlines, and basically all over the internet. It’s almost like there’s a digital desperation that leads people to see who can bash Britain the hardest.

What started as a political slogan has become a kind of diagnosis. And in that diagnosis, many people seem to have drawn the conclusion that everyone is not just leaving, they’re escaping…(because people are somehow forced stay against their own will?)

But the reality is actually very different. Britain is not witnessing a mass exodus in any way shape or form. Somehow the media has taken opinion polls and personal rants as evidence that people have left. The truth is there has been no significant increase in emigration. The data doesn’t lie. Roughly 0.1% of British citizens emigrate each year, a figure that’s barely budged in two decades.

According to data from the Office of National Statistics ending December 2024 Total long-term emigration from the UK was around 517,000, up 11 % from 466,000 in the previous year. Of these, just 77,000 were British nationals meaning 85% of emigrants are foreign nationals. Most of them returning home after finishing work or study, meaning they were never planning to stay permanently in the first place. These figures are just so low it’s just not even worth talking about

So what’s really going on?

Why do so many young people say they’re leaving when so few actually are?

Well it is an emotional topic and the sentiment, at least online, is divisively negative regarding Britain right now, as I said it’s almost like there’s a competition to see who can bash Britain the hardest.

There is even a growing cohort of people that have a problem with the term the UK now. Just look up the Yooky-ification of Britain. There’s also quite a few people that have a problem with the term Britain and even more or claim that british identity doesn’t exist. So when you go down the identity rabbit hole of this piece of land off the coast of the European continent it becomes quite difficult to know what to call this place without offending a sizeable portion of the population (cue eye roll).

But in all honesty, it’s not inconsequential. It is not unimportant that there is so much confusion over terminology and identity here, every country has it’s difficulties and as I discussed in this letter here Great Britain, the UK or whatever you want to call it is, and has been going through, a massive identity crisis for some time which is partly what this malaise of digital doom and gloom is all about.

But we must not make the mistake of confusing complaints with actual movements. When a post about “getting out of Britain” goes viral, it can feel like everyone is packing their bags. And When 72% of young Brits tell the British Council they’d consider working abroad, it can sound like the young have left. But considering, thinking about, wanting to that is not the same as actually leaving.

I can totally relate to this sentiment of wanting to leave because I was in that place in my early 20’s, and so I left. I left Britain for good in 2008 for China and was there for 2 years before moving to Germany. And you may have forgotten but In the aftermath of the Iraq War, during the Blair-Brown years, you could hear the same complaints that you’re hearing today up and down the country. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash young people were struggling then as they are now.

I had the feeling that everyone was leaving back then. Mainly because I joined a programme run by the British council and many people that I knew personally were leaving and yet throughout the early 2000s, just 0.06%–0.10% of the UK’s population emigrated each year. There have been no drastic shifts of British people leaving in droves.

So why does this Narrative Persist, and maybe more importantly who does it Serve?

Because the story is useful. It’s useful To individuals. To institutions. And to the algorithms that profit from spectacle.

For individuals, especially the young and disillusioned, the fantasy of escape is a coping mechanism. It offers an imagined exit from a reality that feels increasingly claustrophobic. In an environment were housing is out of reach, careers paths are extremely uncertain and politicians just don’t get it…it’s tempting to revert to the fantasy of the grass is greener.

In this context, saying “I want to leave” isn’t just a travel aspiration. It’s a form of protest. A way of saying I don’t belong in this version of Britain. I do not agree and I want to wash my hands of this mess….and again…I could say that these are just feelings that don’t reflect reality but if enough people believe something to be true then it kind of is, at least in the context of culture.

For media and political actors, the exodus narrative plays another role: it dramatises discontent without addressing its causes. It’s easier to amplify stories of “brain drain” or “fleeing youth” than to confront the systems that make people want to leave in the first place. It lets governments off the hook and blames “global trends” instead of asking why nurses need food banks or why teachers are quitting in droves.

And then there’s the digital machinery. Social media rewards emotion, not evidence. The more dramatic the story, the more engagement it gets. So “Everyone is leaving!” performs far better than “Emigration rates are stable.”It fits the doom cycle. It validates our cynicism. It makes us feel like we’re not alone in our discontent, even if it’s not actually true.

And that matters. Because when the dominant story becomes “Britain is broken and everyone wants out,” we stop asking the more difficult questions: What are the actual structural problems? What needs to change? What’s worth staying for? And What kind of future are we capable of building, here or elsewhere?

When we engage with the deeper underlying causes we refuse to let despair become our only compass.

The problem that I have with this narrative is that most young Brits have not left the country physically. Like that is the real crux of the matter, they are here physically but seem to have left it psychologically. They’ve left it in spirit.

A 2024 poll by More in Common found that 44% of Britons say they sometimes feel like strangers in their own country. That figure rises to 66% among 18–24-year-olds. In another survey, just 41% of Gen Z said they feel proud to be British. The disillusionment runs deeper than policy failures or party lines. It’s a sense of emotional detachment from any clear future they can believe in. They’re unplugging from the national story. It seems that they may not just be quiet quitting work but the country and culture in general.

This is what makes the exodus narrative so tempting but in its inaccuracy it is actually papering over the real tragedy. A problem far greater than people leaving is people staying who don’t want to be there, who’ve lost trust, lost hope, lost emotional investment…who’ve essentially given up and checked out.

And when you stop identifying with a place, when you no longer see your reflection in its institutions, culture, or imagined future, what reason is there to stay, even if you never leave?

Moving abroad is amazing.

It comes with a huge amount of benefits (and challenges of course). If you’re using money as the excuse that is not valid. If you’re in your 20s or 30s you do not need a lot of money to move abroad. You don’t have to have a business or be a digital nomad. I did manual labour for a year…so just do what you need to do.

However moving abroad is not a magical solution. It’s hard. It’s lonely. You will doubt yourself, and because of this I know that most people will never do it. Which is a shame because one by product of attempting to leave, even if you then come back, is that it makes you appreciate your own country much more. By going to other places you begin to see things very differently and your perspective will shift.

There are so many amazing things about this country. The people, the culture, the countryside, the history and heritage…and you just can’t see that if you are deep in the depths of despair.

So I suppose the purpose of this essay is to reassure you that the number of people leaving Britain has not increased in the last 20 years. There is no exodus of the young, the talented the highly skilled or the rich. If you’re not ready to take that leap and move abroad then make peace with that. It’s ok, you don’t have to leave. Find your people. Build something small and real. Contribute to a scene, a subculture or a project. Because culture isn’t a given. Culture isn’t just something that exists, it has to be built, and if the mainstream story no longer reflects you, then it’s your job to write a new one.

The most subversive act in a system that you feel is collapsing isn’t to escape. It’s to create an alternative path to plant roots and to choose optimism in a doomed world.

Thank you for reading and whichever path you choose, choose it fully.