This is why the UK is losing talented young people to life abroad

Our best and brightest seem to be engaged in a mass exodus from Britain, setting up their lives and careers overseas. Helen Coffey investigates why our country has lost its appeal – and whether there’s anything that could entice people back. I was paying tens of thousands of pounds in tax – and then your phone ends up getting stolen out of your hand in the street. What am I paying all that tax for?” Ray Amjad, 24, poses this rhetorical question from the one-bedroom apartment he’s currently renting in Japan. He’s lived there for eight months, ever since concluding that he was on a hiding to nothing in the UK.

Amjad could epitomise the so-called “brain drain” that has plagued the nation over the past year – a term referring to the mass exodus of young, talented Brits who are abandoning the UK to live abroad. A Cambridge graduate originally hailing from Manchester, Amjad secured a well-paid job after university before going travelling. But visiting other countries opened his eyes to what he saw as the failings of his native one: petty crime, train strikes, overpriced accommodation, crumbling public services and, of course, “miserable” weather.

In the viral video, which has garnered nearly 1 million views and 56,000 likes since she uploaded it on 31 December, the Scottish graduate explains her decision to move in summer 2024. She first pursued a “cool job opportunity” in Greenland for four months before relocating to Hong Kong to teach English. “This is now my home, definitely for the next year,” she says, reeling off a comprehensive list of UK grievances: “s*** pay”; high taxes without seeing where that money is going; expensive tuition fees and student loan interest payments; NHS waiting list times; lack of mental health provision; lack of pension provision; lack of career opportunities; lack of affordable housing or job satisfaction; a decade-long waiting list for her disabled adult sister to have access to supported accommodation so that she can live independently.

“I would, with a heavy heart – because I love my country a lot – genuinely recommend as a young person in the UK that you consider moving,” she advises. “This idea that the UK is better than everywhere else is just b*llocks. That mindset is really holding us back – it stops us from feeling that we can complain.”. Though the countries that these Gen-Zers have opted to move to vary – from the United Arab Emirates to Australia, countries in southeast Asia to closer to home in Europe – their motivations are often eerily similar.

Hyde believes that there’s “an inbuilt culture against success” in Britain and calls it a “toxic” environment – a bugbear that Amjad also shares. In Amjad’s opinion, the UK puts a cap on ambition; young people who want to succeed are encouraged, but only up to a point. Growing up in a deprived area of Manchester, Amjad was met with scepticism from peers and teachers alike when he said he was planning on studying at Oxford or Cambridge. That culture is a turn-off for young entrepreneurs like him; since moving to Japan, he’s started his own successful business creating apps, websites and software.

“I did a startup accelerator in the US for two or three months – I think the attitude towards people who have big ambitions or big hopes in the UK is quite different to America and other cultures. It’s almost as though there’s an upper bound on what you can achieve in Britain. In London, the upper bound is, you might get a nice job in consulting or finance or whatever – whereas when I was in San Francisco, you’d meet people who’d make revolutionary companies or apps or services.”.

Other accomplished friends of his have also flown the coop, particularly those who studied medicine – “because they heard doctors are treated better and paid better in Australia or Canada”. It’s almost as though there’s an upper bound on what you can achieve in Britain. Australia in particular is increasingly enticing for young Brits looking to relocate. A record number of young travellers has turned the country into the world’s most desired destination for foreign working tourists. According to statistics released in December, the number of working tourists from the UK had risen from 31,000 in 2023 to almost 50,000 year-on-year. This surge in popularity is largely attributed to the widening of the eligibility criteria for Australia’s working holiday visa. People up to the age of 35 can now live and work there for three years (the upper age limit was previously 30), while British applicants are no longer required to complete 88 days of agricultural labour per year in order to stay there.

“I find the UK a very depressing place to be, even now when I go back and visit family and friends,” he tells me. “From the weather, to government decisions, to the cost of living and even simple things like going to a supermarket and communicating with the staff, it feels like nobody is happy, nobody wants to be there.” He adds that he doesn’t blame people for this – “It’s like a knock-on effect, everything starts at the top and unfortunately it has worked its way down and the people at the bottom are the ones who are suffering the most.”.