To flee or not to flee

‘Why is no one talking about what is happening in our country?’ demands the splash across the front cover of the latest book by George Walden. It is therefore something of a surprise in the pages that follow to find the former Conservative minister discoursing at length on the problems of immigration, terrorism, crime and house prices — all familiar mainstays of the modern conversational canon.

To be fair, it is Walden’s contention that these are but contributing factors to a national malaise manifesting itself in the under-reported fact that so many Britons want to leave the country of their birth. What is more, it is not our cleaners, plumbers and fruit-pickers who are throwing in the towel in the face of cut-throat competition from the Polish diaspora. It is Britain’s middle classes who are disproportionately most likely to wave goodbye to a country that no amount of Carphone Warehouses can prevent from appearing utterly disconnected.

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The rate of exit is increasing. In the next five years alone, over one million Britons are expected to emigrate. From what are they seeking relief? The conceit behind Time to Emigrate? is the author’s attempts to imagine that his son and daughter-in-law are thinking of joining the exodus. In a series of epistles, he explores their reasoning and offers counsel on whether they are doing the right thing.

In Walden’s analysis, emigration holds no appeal for the standard ill-educated Briton who has no special skills to offer other first-world nations. Nor does it make sense for ‘anyone who is well-born, anyone with money, and anyone with a promising career in politics, the media, the City or the law’. For them, the future remains bright. Rather, it is the ‘middling sort’ of person who is now being priced out of anywhere respectable (at least in the south- east) and for whom the school fees burden is simply too great.