POPULATION GROWTH

Most European countries are predicted to have shrinking populations over the next 50 to 100 years. This will give problems, as there are fewer people of working age to take care of all of those pensioners.

One exception is the United Kingdom, whose population is growing and is predicted to continue to do so. Indeed, within a generation the U.K. will become the most populous country in the E.U., overtaking Germany, whose population is already shrinking. Whether that makes the Brits more amenable to Europe, is however, doubtful.

What is driving this growth is not the Brits themselves, but immigrants of one kind or another. The number of Brits has been stable since the beginning of the 1990's at around 52 million, but the number of non-native residents has gone up from 4.3 million in 1995 to 13.4 million in 2001. Many of these are from other European countries, Poland for instance.

Immigrants tend to do jobs that natives don't want to do; a London household without a Polish cleaner or plumber would be an oddity. However, they also increase pressure for housing on what is already a very crowded country. One of the reasons why the property market in the south east barely noticed the financial crisis in 2008.

That pressure is also contributing to a backlash against foreigners in all forms. With Bulgarians and Romanians eligible to come to the U.K. next year, British society is going to face challenges in the coming decades.

Walter Blotscher