EU citizens made Britain their home – now they face a hostile environment | Rafael Behr

How many people will become lost in the bureaucratic labyrinth of the Home Office before the June deadline?

Since the pandemic stopped British citizens moving freely across Europe, the sacrifice of that same freedom to Brexit has not been much. It isn't even a cost in Eurosceptic lore, where the right to live and work in 27 other countries was never treated as a reciprocal benefit. It was resented as a licence for them to come over here. Revoking it was priority number one for the UK in talks with Brussels.

The referendum result was interpreted as a duty to satisfy people who saw no value in freedom of movement at the expense of people who had built their lives around it. That included plenty of UK citizens at work or in retirement in mainland Europe. The price of a dark blue passport was someone else's world turned upside down.