So much for Boris’ newfound love for Australia and the supposed closer connections with Australia post Brexit. Events have conspired and they’ve all headed home reports the Australian Financial review.

London | The coronavirus pandemic has collapsed the flow of Australians into Britain and lured thousands of expats home, shrinking London’s traditionally vibrant Aussie expat community and putting a dampener on the two countries’ longstanding people-to-people ties.

The number of visas granted to Australians to live and work in Britain in the six months to September 30 last year nose-dived 74 per cent from the same period of 2019, according to official British data. And visa applications dropped by a similar amount.

Visas for the two-year scheme for under-30s known as “youth mobility” – which typically make up half of all British visas for Australians – plunged 80 per cent. Student visas almost halved and the number of standard-issue skilled visas fell by two-thirds.

Put that alongside an exodus of Aussies back home – of the 440,000 who repatriated last year, a fair chunk would have come from Britain – and the famously vibrant and visible community of Australians in London has been decimated.

Gone are so many of the Aussie nurses, teachers, accountants, lawyers, paramedics, bar staff, baristas and receptionists – a cohort of people who in normal times ensure that barely a day goes by when a Londoner doesn’t have some kind of interaction with an Australian.

“The younger people that came over here for a two- to three-year secondment from their accounting or law firm, lockdown has pulled the rug from under their feet,” said Damian Walsh, chairman of the Britain-Australia Society.

“They don’t have the office-based social life. They’re sitting in small flats and not enjoying themselves. They can’t travel to Europe or meet friends in the pub. It’s accelerating or crystallising their decision to return to Australia.”

Read the full article at

https://www.afr.com/world/europe/covid-19-puts-paid-to-australian-rite-of-passage-to-britain-20210122-p56w1s