5 Prime Ministers & 2 Monarchs
When I shared this reflection in October 2022, I’d lived in the UK through five prime ministers, two monarchs and one YouTube channel. I’d been planning to talk about how the country had changed since I moved here, then sat down and realised just how much had happened.
I moved to England in 2015, when David Cameron was prime minister, although I had to Google that because I couldn’t remember. During those first months in Kent, I was mainly trying to find my first job and get settled. Keeping up with politics wasn’t my priority.
Brexit over my morning cereal
By the referendum on 23 June 2016, I had my first job in England. Some colleagues voted and quite a few didn’t, but the people I was talking to generally assumed Brexit wouldn’t happen. Surely not. That was the mood around me, rather than a picture of what everybody in Britain thought.
The next morning, I was eating cereal and seeing the result all over the news. The UK had voted to leave the EU. I remember being really surprised, and the people around me were surprised too.
My reaction as a Canadian living abroad was to feel bad for British people who wanted to move overseas. I’d always envied the freedom of movement Europeans had, the opportunity to live and work in another country and experience somewhere new. I felt sad thinking about young people who hadn’t yet had that opportunity and would lose it. British citizens’ EU free movement rights ended with the transition period on 31 December 2020.
Nine months I hadn’t expected in Canada
Then there were what I called the “sick times”, the pandemic and lockdowns. They took up a large part of my experience of living here, and I had plenty of my own drama going on alongside everything in the news.
I left the UK in February 2020 and went back to Canada to apply for a new visa. Then the visa offices shut for months, and I think I ended up in Canada for about nine months, door to door. I hadn’t expected anything like that.
The visa itself was stressful because I worried about being rejected and didn’t know what I’d do if that happened. I was separated from my partner, who couldn’t come to Canada, while I couldn’t return to the UK. I also lost my father during the wider period of pandemic and lockdown.
Being a foreigner isn’t always good. I wanted this channel to show the good and the bad, including the stressful bits, and those months were a big part of my own experience. They belong in the account just as much as the more enjoyable things I share.
Saying King Charles III
In September 2022, Queen Elizabeth II died and Charles III became King. Her death surprised me, and I’d never experienced anything like that change of monarch before. Even saying “King Charles III” felt strange. I hadn’t thought I’d be saying it.
Day-to-day life didn’t feel hugely different, but culturally it was a big change. The Queen had been around for so long and had been such a part of British culture and identity. Now there was a King, and hearing “God Save the King” was new to me too. I’d never actually heard that version before.
What is going on?
That was the title I wanted to give the government section. Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were the five prime ministers since I’d moved here. By the time I shared this, Truss’s brief premiership had ended and Sunak had just taken office.
I’m not a politician, and I wasn’t pretending to understand all of it. As a person living here, the government felt unsteady to me. There seemed to have been so much turmoil, and the lack of political stability felt stressful. I didn’t know what would happen next.
When I first moved here in 2015, I hadn’t expected to see half of this. Looking back at even a few points made me realise how much we’d been through. I do want to make one thing clear, though. It’s not my fault, I promise.
Throughout all that change, I’d had Adventures and Naps. I’d grown up on the channel and learned about British life, British culture and myself, with people following along through my silly little videos. After talking through all of this, my plan was to have a cup of tea, sit down and take a deep breath.
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