by Paul Henninger

As Donald Trump gathers momentum toward the Republican nomination, many Americans are engaging in one of the finer election year traditions: threatening to leave the United States. As has been widely reported, the evening of Trump’s victory in recent primary elections saw such a large volume of people search “Move to Canada” that the Canadian government’s website was brought to its knees. Those considering a move to the sunny climes of the United State’s northern neighbour will no doubt want to conduct wider due diligence and as a public service we here at Ambivalently in Exile would like to provide a primer on what any prospective expatriate, draft dodger or citizenship-renouncer should know if contemplating a move to the United Kingdom.

There is a lot to love about the UK. On some level it’s an easy move. People speak roughly the same language, there are bacon sandwiches, and the cliché’d expatriate benefit of living close to Europe and North Africa is a real boon. From New York, a two hour trip gets you to Boston or Washington, DC.… From London a two hour trip gets you to sitting at a bar drinking a glass of delicious wine snacking on Pintxos in a medieval square in Barcelona. That said, not everything is so straightforward about a move to the UK. So it’s our hope that this guide can provide a little context about your future new political environment, culinary options, driving conditions and other important things. In no particular order:

Brexit: In addition to being one of the most unfortunate and puzzling lexical concatenations in history, Brexit refers to the process by which British citizens will decide whether or not to remain a sort of part of the European Union, or to go it alone, or more alone depending on how it all works out. As an American, you can’t vote on this issue. You just have to live with what all the Brits decide. There’s a lot at stake, possibly. On the one hand there are a lot of benefits to Being sort of part of the European Union. You can travel all over Europe without waiting in immigration lines and anyone who’s ever waited in immigration lines at Heathrow knows the existential agony of wasting a measurable percentage of your life in the longest line (or queue, as you will soon learn to say) ever created. So less waiting is good. What else? There are various banking agreements whose details not many people seem to be able to articulate that make it better for financial institutions to operate out of London. So staying in means more bankers which is good if you, say, need a job. Perhaps less good if you are the kind of person who is fleeing the Trump presidency. One real point of contention with Brexit are EU laws governing Toasters. That’s right, Toasters. The things that turn bread into toast. The EU Parliament likes nothing better than to make laws harmonizing things across Europe. How employment benefits work, where trucks (lorries) are allowed to drive (everywhere, especially down tiny, tiny little streets that are only technically wide enough for said trucks [lorries] to pass through, other vehicles, pedestrians, and side mirrors be damned). The EU wants to regulate everything. And one EU regulation that the UK rightly has a big problem with is about Toasters. EU toasters are terrible. They are probably better from an environmental or safety point of view but they essentially don’t make toast. They make the bread a little warm and kind of stale. But EU toasters do NOT do one important thing and that’s toast. You can practically stick your hand in an EU toaster while it’s on and you’d be fine (don’t actually do this). The Brits are toast fans and see this as the kind of unacceptable hegemony that the ever expanding creep of the EU is responsible for. And they’re right. Those toasters are no good. Brexit: jobs versus toast. It’s complicated. You might want to bring a toaster with you when you move.

Grilling: American’s love to grill. Summer, winter, doesn’t matter (unless you are from one of those places where it’s so cold that no one goes outside in winter, like Canada). Walk outside, fire up the grill, throw some burgers on said grill. Boom: Dinner. Unfortunately, although you can do that kind of thing here in the UK, it isn’t grilling. Oh, grill’s exist. And there’s a slowly building interest in cooking meat over an open flame outside. But a grill in the UK is a broiler. You can cook something in the grill, not on it. And you can barbeque, which refers to the outside open flame thing, but you need to banish the word “grill” from your brain. Except don’t do that because a grill is a broiler. And you can’t use the word broiler anymore. So shift the word grill over to where broil and broiler are. Got it? Great. I need a burger.

The NHS: The NHS is the UK’s version of Obamacare, or the Affordable Healthcare Act, depending on your point of view. The NHS makes Obamacare look like some kind of Harvard Business School free market science project. The NHS is proper nationalized healthcare. Single payer. Centralized planning. An attempt to provide veeeeery broad coverage. All the good stuff. And there are undoubtedly great things about the NHS. Everyone is covered. Full stop. You can walk into an Emergency Room (except don’t call it an Emergency Room because those don’t exist. It’s an A & E. Which probably stands for something but no one seems to know what…) and get treated for anything no matter who you are without fear of getting billed for something. So you’re all set in terms of going to the doctor, only no one “goes to the doctor”. You “go to hospital”, which doesn’t mean you have to go to the hospital. Even when you go to the doctor you are going to hospital. Anyway, technically everyone has access to healthcare. The problem is there’s only so much healthcare to do around. So that means you wait. Your 8 year old kid has the flu and you go to the A&E? Expect to wait. And wait. And wait. For hours. And no one can tell you how long it’s going to be. It’s just going to be a long, long time. Broken leg? You wait. Archery accident? You wait. This becomes a real problem if you need an operation. One friend of ours needed a minor operation for something very painful but better not discussed in detail and was told that they could have the operation, for free, but that they would have to wait 6 months. Six Months. How this is different from being told you can’t have the surgery is a little unclear. Every so often there are articles about how people go to France to have surgery or about how the UK might actually send people to France to have surgery. I haven’t been to a doctor or hospital in France, so maybe this is a good idea, but these are the kinds of solutions we’re looking at over here to how to make single payer nationalized healthcare work. If you are fleeing the Trump presidency, you are likely to be the kind of person who is all for nationalized healthcare. Might as well come on over here and see what it’s like!

Sandwiches, Bacon: There are some things in life that when you encounter them you can’t understand how you ever lived without them. Such a simple idea, it seems crazy that it’s even an idea really. The Bacon Sandwich: one of the greatest and under celebrated sandwiches in the world. A roll with butter, toasted (presumably not in an EU toaster) and a piece of bacon. It’s just amazing and in the UK, they serve them up like water. The bacon here is different, of course. It’s cut the other way or something. You can get USA-style bacon but it’s called streaky bacon, which while a little off putting kind of makes sense when you look at it. Bacon Sandwiches are not made with streaky bacon. They are made with regular bacon and it’s glorious. It’s like a BLT without all the pesky vegetation. Bacon sandwiches also have lots of slightly odd names which are fun. Bacon Butties. Bacon Sarnies. A bacon sandwich is perfect by itself, but you can also opt to have it with brown sauce (not a good name for a sauce but it’s delicious, kind of like a less tangy A-1 sauce) or red sauce. Red sauce does not refer to a red version of brown sauce. Nor does it refer to pasta sauce. It’s ketchup. People will know what you mean if you ask for ketchup, so don’t worry about it too much. Just enjoy the bacon sandwich.

Domestic Appliances: The UK has some quirks with regard to domestic appliances. And while you’ll get used to it eventually, most of this is bad news. First of all, combo washer-dryers are very common here because there’s not enough space for a separate washer and dryer unless you can afford a giant house. Even the separate washer driers aren’t the gigantic nuclear reactor powered things you can get in basically every appliance store in the United States. But back to the combo units. You might mistakenly think for a second that this clothes cleaning mash up is a technical innovation. It is not. They don’t work. They neither wash well nor dry well and if you leave them alone for 15 seconds and it smells like something died in there. Not a good look. Then there are the Refrigerators. Again, some Brits are starting to get big American style fridges but the models that are most common here are tiny. You can fill them up with a single shopping bag. At the beginning, you’ll find ways to justify this to yourself. You buy groceries more often from your quaint high street butcher and produce vendor. You waste less. Eventually, though, you realize that it’s just a really small refrigerator. Do not, however, be tempted to do what some Americans do and that’s bring their gigantic American refrigerators with them to the UK. This isn’t a good look. The guys moving your stuff will laugh at you, probably to your face. There won’t be enough room for your fridge so people end up putting them outside where they run for a while until they rust. It’s kind of unbelievable that people even think to do this. Let’s stop, everybody. Get used to the tiny fridge and smelly clothes. On the upside there are wall switches that allow you to turn said appliances on and off for some reason. You can turn your oven off! Like off-off! Even if it’s not on! You can accidentally turn off your refrigerator fumbling for the lights in the middle of the night and then wake up and wonder why all your food isn’t very cold. The UK has many amazing features.

Dogs: Now this is one way in which the UK is just plain better than the USA. Unless you don’t like dogs in which case I have no time for you anyway. Dogs can go everywhere in the UK. Dogs can come into restaurants! Or pubs anyway. You can bring your dog to dinner! You can have a beer with your dog! It’s great. Dogs make everything better. Also, dogs can run around off leash in parks here. Not the parts of the park where little children climb on things. The rest of the park. They run free and play and unfortunately poop where their owners apparently don’t notice them pooping (yeah right) but generally it’s great. The whole country is basically one big dog park. Getting your dog over here is a little complicated. But you can’t expect fleeing the Donald to be all rainbows and unicorns. You need to get about a million forms filled out and it costs more for a dog to fly over here than a family of three but it’s better than it used to be. Back in the days of quarantine, dogs had to live in a cage in a dark warehouse by Heathrow for 6 months before they let them in, all because there’s no rabies here in the British Isles or something. By the time your dog got out it wanted to kill you if it remembered you at all. Anyway, no need to worry about that anymore. The UK is great for dogs. And people who like dogs. I don’t know what to tell you if you’re a cat person. Cats aren’t welcome in pubs or parks. What kind of crazy person would bring a cat to a pub?

Well, that’s about it. There’s all kinds of other things. You have to pay to watch regular television but it’s like a tax and it’s complicated to figure out how to pay it. It’s dark for the entire winter, roughly. And there’s the whole football-soccer thing of course. Oh and if you think the US should have higher taxes, welcome to the UK! We got that covered. It’s really is a great place to live though. We have our own white haired socialist nut job involved in national politics over here so you won’t miss Bernie Sanders. And No Donald Trump! I didn’t follow what happened to the vote banning the Donald from the UK but the fact that they even considered it means that Trump probably won’t set foot over here for a while. So make yourself (relatively) comfortable. Welcome to the UK.