By Gully Foyle author of "75 Brexit Benefits: Tangible Benefits from The UK Having Left The European Union"
When I started to write my book back in October/November 2024, one of the things I kept hearing time and time again was that there was no useful reference material for pro-Brexit advocates to refer to, no single place to refer to for useful information on a given aspect of the debate. That is essentially what I have looked to create through the process of writing "75 Brexit Benefits", a one-stop shop for information to support the case for leaving the EU. What I didn't expect was that those efforts would come in handy quite so quickly.
The UK Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in her budget stated yet again that we see our politicians rely on the delusion of immigration to provide an uptick in growth instead of helping the British people already here to uplift GDP themselves. Heaven forbid that a UK Labour politician believe in the value of the British public over those from another country – I mean, how preposterous a notion in this age of equality and inclusivity, to believe that a British worker is just as capable of adding value as someone from the EU.
The Chancellor went on to say that a youth mobility scheme would be "good for the economy, good for growth and good for business". But it does not take a rocket scientist to decode this message for what it is – an admittance that it is more valuable to the youth of the EU than it is to the youth of the UK. The only way that such a scheme would be of net good to the UK economy, in terms of growth, is if one or both of the following statements were true:
1) That those entering the EU from the UK, were worth more to the UK economy than those leaving the UK for the EU under the same scheme
2) That significantly more of the EU youth used the scheme than the UK youth in the other direction
There is no world here where a short-term youth mobility scheme creates new jobs in the UK – only takes existing vacancies away from UK citizens. Yes, this might help those businesses who have previously relied on migrant workers such as the hospitality industry, but only by allowing them to continue to take advantage of cheaper labour than the UK workforce.
I explored the conflicting narrative and real world data of UK mobility within the EU in benefit 64 in my book – and have this morning enjoyed referring to it as source material for social media posts on the topic. As EU members, over two-thirds of UK citizens living or working abroad were doing so in the Anglosphere nations of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA. Only 1 in 5 were in the EU26 (6% were in Ireland through the Common Travel Area or CTA).
Living and working in the UK is attractive for EU citizens – higher salaries, better schools, and for most EU member states a higher standard of living. This is the opposite for UK citizens. All EU member states teach English, the global language of business, as the dominant second language at school. Many English students learn basic French at school, but how many learn German, or Italian, or Estonian for that matter.
An EU Youth Mobility Scheme can only ever be one-sided, and that is exactly why we should go nowhere near such a thing. Such a scheme works like Osmosis, with the semi-permeable membrane being the UK border. Workers will always move from high concentration to low concentration, and the UK has one of the lowest unemployment levels in Europe.
Gully Foyle is an outspoken online researcher, commentator and now published author, whose first book "75 Brexit Benefits: Tangible Benefits from The UK Having Left The European Union" is on sale now at Amazon and all good bookshops.
