It\u2019s a story best told in three parts. First: the year is 2015, I\u2019m working at the Evening Standard diary, and the referendum still feels like a distant threat. I attend the Conservatives\u2019 annual conference \u2013 my first \u2013 and am instructed to cause some gentle chaos.<\/p>\n
I attend a panel that is fringe in more ways than one. I listen to Bernard Jenkin, John Redwood and Jacob Rees-Mogg explain why \u201cOut\u201d must win. During the Q&A, I stand up and introduce myself \u2013 23, journalist, came here to study, would rather like to stay. What would happen to me if Britain were to leave the EU?<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease stay,\u201d Rees-Mogg tells me. \u201cI\u2019ll write to the Secretary of State to make sure you can.\u201d The story I write the next day does not mention the word \u201cBrexit\u201d. For months afterwards, the referendum both feels real and doesn\u2019t. Somehow I end up spending my whole life covering it, attending events on it and talking about it with friends and colleagues, but I don\u2019t really believe it\u2019s relevant to me.<\/p>\n
Sure, there are people talking about European immigrants in ways that feel less than kind, but I train myself to ignore them, and pretend they\u2019re not talking about me. \u201cAh I\u2019ll be fine!\u201d, I tell people who ask me how I\u2019m feeling. \u201cThis eccentric Tory MP told me he\u2019d lobby the government to let me stay anyway, and there were dozens of witnesses in the room.\u201d I\u2019m only partially joking.<\/p>\n
Second: it\u2019s 2019 and I know the deadline is approaching but there\u2019s nothing I can do about it. The 23rd of June came and went but even afterwards \u2013 after that grey morning, when I walked home and sobbed as I saw a Remain sticker on the pavement \u2013 I spent years believing that Brexit both existed and didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
I wrote about it week after week after week, but it was just over there, in a way. It couldn\u2019t touch me. Still: the end of the year is coming up and I know I have to apply for settled status, otherwise I may be deported back to France, but I can\u2019t bring myself to do it. It feels too personal and too insulting.<\/p>\n
On some level I can tell that applying will be the end of something; the end of my denial, and this paper-thin belief I\u2019d crammed down my own throat, that I wasn\u2019t actually concerned and I wasn\u2019t one of those European interlopers everyone talked about. I do end up doing it in the end, just before the deadline, and it\u2019s fine. I tell myself it\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n
Third: it\u2019s June 2026 and that means a few different things. Mostly, right now, what I think about is that in a few months, I will have spent as much time in Britain as I had in France.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I sort of know how I feel about it and I sort of don\u2019t. France feels quite foreign to me now, whenever I go back, and all my friends have left town so I spend increasingly little time speaking French with anyone face-to-face. Mostly, I think of London as my real home, and I feel lightly sick if I\u2019ve been away from it for too long. It\u2019s in my bones and, though I have loved many other places, I just couldn\u2019t imagine myself living anywhere else.<\/p>\n
People keep telling me that I should apply for British citizenship and I don\u2019t want to. I know I\u2019m in quite an enviable situation, I tell them, but I have my settled status and it suits me fine. I don\u2019t feel British and so I don\u2019t see why I should become British. The state made a deal with me when I moved here \u2013 it allowed me to be European and nothing else \u2013 and I refuse to change my position because the country changed theirs.<\/p>\n
I look at the polls, and at Reform and at Restore, and I do secretly wonder if I\u2019m being daft again. I didn\u2019t take Jacob Rees-Mogg seriously when I should have and I nearly lost my right to live here because I didn\u2019t want to reckon with the consequences of the referendum. Am I really about to let my stubbornness put me at risk of getting deported \u2013 sorry, \u201cremigrated\u201d?<\/p>\n
The honest answer, right now, is yes. I love Britain and I feel very strongly about it, but I\u2019m not British and I feel strongly about that too. It\u2019s been an odd and often uncomfortable decade but I\u2019m here to stay, though only on my terms. I think that should be fine. I\u2019ll keep believing it for as long as I can: I think it will be fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a story best told in three parts. First: the year is 2015, I\u2019m working at the Evening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[157,13,3724,1469,29742],"class_list":["post-61518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-brexit","tag-britain","tag-conservative-party","tag-european-union","tag-jacob-rees-mogg"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116737066044530996","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}