Since Trump began his second term, Britain has become a political escape hatch for American celebrities and wealthy Democrats.
It’s so popular that last week, the British Home Office released data showing that in the 12 months leading up to March, almost 7,000 US citizens applied to become British subjects or live here indefinitely — the highest number since such records began in 2004.
A third of those applications have been received since Trump took office at the start of 2025.
There are the famous emigres. Kamala Harris supporters Ellen DeGeneres and wife Portia de Rossi have taken up residence in the bucolic Cotswolds, selling their Montecito homes after becoming “very disillusioned” when Trump won, according to TMZ. “English country life” runs the caption on Ellen’s latest Instagram reel showing her luxurious home and grounds, complete with chicken and gambolling rabbit.
Fellow comedian Rosie O’Donnell has moved to UK-adjacent Ireland and will only “consider coming back” when it is “safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America,” as she said on a Tik Tok video in March.
Brit Minnie Driver left LA to return to the motherland prompted by Trump’s win. Others considering a move to the UK include Barbra Streisand, who has said she “can’t live in this country if [Trump] becomes president,” as well as Cher and America Ferrera.
“Girls” creator Lena Dunham — along with Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes — traded the US for London before Trump’s inauguration.
But the glitzy progressives falling for Britain may find they are in for a shock: This is not the liberal paradise they imagined, despite our Labour prime minister. In fact, Britain’s next leader could be a lot like Donald Trump.
The populist Reform party is surging in the polls, threatening to explode Britain’s political landscape. It is built around Brexit architect Nigel Farage, an anti-immigration figure with similar cult-like status to Trump and the president’s erstwhile close friend.
Reform is no fringe party: 40% of Brits think Farage will be the next Prime Minister.
Trump’s followers remain steadfast despite all; as the president himself noted, he could shoot someone in Times Square and “not lose any voters.” Farage, our possible future prime minister, confers a similar blind devotion on his own party supporters. When a Reform candidate from Yorkshire, selected to run for a seat in Parliament, was revealed to have said, “Black people should get off their lazy arses and stop acting like savages,” voters didn’t care; he still came second.
Last week, a frenzy erupted over a “racist” advert for Reform which bashed the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar by saying he will “prioritize the Pakistani community.” Not a peep of contrition.
Do those trading Trump’s America for Britain fully understand what has been going on in our less glamorous areas?
This week saw a car-ramming in Liverpool, injuring scores who were out celebrating a soccer triumph.
Do they know what happened last summer, following the massacre by Axel Rudakubana, the son of Sudanese immigrants, of three little girls at a Taylor Swift dance class in the peaceful northern town Southport?
There were mass riots as thugs stormed mosques and lit them on fire — plus a groundswell of rage at how the Islamist ambitions and sympathies of Britain’s unassimilated immigrants and asylum-seekers are covered up.
From the British perspective, of course, the arrival of wealthy and famous American Dems-in-exile has shone an interesting light on our own debates about immigration. Though few admit it, least of all those in power, there are Good Migrants and there are Bad Migrants.
It is generally agreed now by all the parties that Something Must Be Done about the Bad Ones. In 2024, 694 boats carrying 53 illegal immigrants apiece seeking asylum arrived on British shores, costing taxpayers £6 million a day on hotel bills alone. But the good ones like Ellen with her $18 million farmhouse? We can’t get enough.
Ironically echoing Trump’s idea of a “gold card” for desirable immigrants, the UK’s home secretary said earlier this month that Britain would be introducing “provisions to qualify more swiftly that take account of the contribution people have made.” This should ease the way for more Ellens, Evas and Lenas.
Of course, it’s hardly a surprise that most people will take an American celebrity over a trafficked Syrian any day, and their arrival is certainly a bonus for us. But when they discover how far short of a liberal paradise Britain is becoming, their stays on this sceptred isle might be shorter than anticipated.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
