I’m not some sort of secret Reform voter, OK? As a Brit (albeit a Brit abroad), I’ve got no problem with rich immigrants coming to the UK and taking all our mansions. I just think they really ought to integrate and not bring their funny foreign ideas with them.

Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, I’m talking to you. The California couple arrived in the UK last year, just before Donald Trump won the election. As soon as the votes were in, they declared they weren’t going back, and would stay on the saner side of the Atlantic. I’m not sure how the immigration logistics worked, but it seems “one in, one out” schemes don’t apply to people coming in on big jets, only small boats. The pair bought a fancy pad in the Cotswolds and DeGeneres buttered up the locals during a public appearance in July by declaring “Everything here is just better.”

It’s easy to be upbeat during a British summer, when all is green and pleasant. Now that the winter gloom has set in, however, rumour has it that the fairweather Brits are plotting a return to Trumpland. According to the Mail on Sunday (so take all this with a few pinches of salt), the couple miss their friends and can’t stand the thought of another British winter. I understand being homesick, but you lose a bit of street cred if you flee creeping........

© The Guardian