Scottish self-harm

Few of the arguments for Brexit have withstood the test of time, from the nonsense of £350 million a week for the NHS to the absurd forecasts of non-eu trade, the canard of the European Court of Justice dictating the law in British courts and the immigration statistics. Given the xenophobia which characterises the British beyond the metropolitan elite, the last fabrication was the worst. It’s too late for Westminster to admit that benefit tourism was a myth or that virtually all foreign students, as well as those on work or visitor visas, return home.

A deluge of Brexit propaganda swept away the truth. European migrants do not steal the jobs of UK workers or significantly depress wages, and as fewer than 2 per cent of tax credits goes to them, they contribute over £7 billion more in taxes than they cost in terms of benefits.

The demonisation of international students has damaged higher education, one of our few success stories, because the 350,000 entrants are worth £10bn to our economy and yet our deluded leaders are still hellbent on cutting the numbers studying in Britain by half!

Racially motivated populists and imperial fantasists claimed EU migration was turning the UK into a foreign country and portrayed students, teachers, nurses, doctors, business executives and agricultural workers as an invading army destroying

our national identity. Yet the fact is our agricultural sector, social care, NHS, industry and commercial life depends on migrants and by encouraging this wave of xenophobia our political class and tabloids misled the people and encouraged this monumental act of national self-harm.

(REV DR) JOHN CAMERON

Howard Place, St Andrews