During a striking conversation on Chicago’s Morning Answer, bestselling author Lionel Shriver detailed why she fled the United Kingdom after 36 years—echoing and expanding on recent comments from British columnist Peter Hitchens, who urged citizens to “get out while you still can.”
Shriver, whose latest novel Mania was released earlier this year, told host Dan Proft that she saw the decline of the U.K. happening in real time, and that the political trajectory under both Conservative and Labour leadership made staying untenable.
“I had a feeling things were only going to get worse,” she said. “It was obvious a Labour government was coming—not because people wanted Labour, but because they were sick of the Conservatives. It was a protest vote, and it’s been self-destructive.”
A Country That “Doesn’t Work”
Shriver pointed to failing infrastructure as an early indicator that Britain was no longer managing even its basic functions.
“If you want to travel, you can’t count on the trains,” she said. “You have to be somewhere for work, and the train will be cancelled or delayed, and you won’t make it.”
She described these daily disruptions not as inconveniences but as symptoms of broader national dysfunction—a country unable to deliver services, enforce accountability, or even keep its government solvent. The U.K. now borrows money merely to pay the interest on previous borrowing.
“That’s like paying your mortgage with a credit card,” she said.
Immigration at a Scale the Country Cannot Absorb
But Shriver reserved her most pointed criticism for Britain’s immigration policy, which she argues has reshaped the country at an unsustainable pace.
“They’ve imported something like 10 million people in about 20 years, into a country a fifth the size of the U.S.,” she said. “They’re not building enough houses. It’s created a housing disaster.”
The demographic transformation has also produced what she calls social and cultural fragmentation.
“Immigrants cluster together—that’s natural,” she noted. “But you end up with huge ghettos disconnected from the rest of the country. People walk around saying, ‘What happened? This doesn’t look like my country anymore.’”
London, she said, is the clearest example. As of 2021, only 37 percent of residents were white British, a figure that has likely declined since.
“You can go for a walk for an hour and not see any English people,” she said. “This is the capital city, and it’s full of foreigners. It’s no longer an English city.”
A Welfare System Inviting Dependency
Shriver argued that mass immigration has intersected with a generous welfare system to expand dependency for both new arrivals and young British citizens.
“People have discovered that if they say they have anxiety or depression, they can get disability benefits, which pay more than standard welfare,” she said. Meanwhile, the tax burden is the highest since World War II—discouraging work and pushing professionals like Shriver herself out of the country.
One new policy sealed her decision to leave: beginning next year, self-employed people will be required to file five tax returns annually, uploading digital copies of every receipt.
“That single law would have driven me out,” she said. “The bureaucracy is obscene.”
Political Will: All Rhetoric, No Change
Despite tough talk from Labour leader Keir Starmer on border control and asylum reform, Shriver believes none of it will translate into policy.
“It’s all rhetoric,” she said. “The immigration system is out of control. People cross the Channel in rubber dinghies, the Royal Navy picks them up like a taxi service, and they’re put in four-star hotels with meals, phones, and stipends.”
Hotels once used for weddings and community events are now state-funded housing for recent arrivals.
“Locals are furious,” Shriver said. “And politicians act like they’ve just discovered a housing crisis they themselves created.”
A Slow, Invisible Collapse
Shriver emphasized that the decline in Britain was not sudden but cumulative.
“Things fall apart little by little,” she reflected. “When you’re living through it, you don’t always notice. But over decades, everything changes.”
Her view of London is emblematic: once a global center of British culture and commerce, now increasingly a financial hub drifting toward New York while losing its native identity.
“The firms are leaving. The city is unrecognizable from when I moved there,” she said.
A Warning Echoed Across Continents
Peter Hitchens’ message—leave if you can—struck a chord with Shriver because, as she noted, she already followed it.
“I saw the writing on the wall,” she said simply.
Her remarks underscore a political and cultural warning that resonates far beyond British borders. As Proft noted, many of the trends Shriver described—runaway immigration, collapsing public infrastructure, punitive taxation, bureaucratic overreach, and political denial—are familiar to Americans watching similar patterns unfold in major U.S. cities.
Whether the United Kingdom can reverse its trajectory remains unclear. What is clear is that one of its most prominent literary voices has given up on waiting.
If you’d like a companion op-ed, a profile of Lionel Shriver’s career, or a follow-up piece comparing trends in the U.K. and U.S., I can prepare that as well.