EU citizens

One of the constant themes uttered by Nicola Sturgeon is that she wants Scotland to have its own immigration controls, separately from the Government. The reason for this is that she believes that the Snprun administration north of the border would then be able to encourage EU nationals to come and live in Scotland.

Well, I have some good news for her and some bad news. First, the good news. At the time of the Brexit vote, three million EU citizens were estimated to be in the UK. Despite the opinion of many, the SNP to the fore amongst them, we were told that Brexit was bad and that we would lose a huge amount of talent when EU citizens who were here returned home wholesale to Europe.

In May of this year, it transpired that the number of EU citizens in the UK was actually 5.4 million. By June, that number had arisen to 5.61 million, which is almost ten per cent of the entire UK population! Lots of EU citizens here, then, for the SNP to encourage north. Now, the bad news for Ms Sturgeon. Of the 5.4 million EU citizens in the UK in May, 4.9 million had applied for UK residency. Unfortunately for the SNP, out of the 4.9 million applying for UK residency, 4.88 million were living in England. Odd, isn’t it how the welcoming nationalist party of Scotland which wants to break up the UK and rejoin the EU doesn’t seem to be of any interest to 4.88 million out of 4.9 million of the people they want to welcome here? Odd too, how so many EU citizens don’t want to live in the EU, but want to live in Brexit UK?

Maybe they know something about separatist Scotland that the separatist Scottish voters don’t know.

ANDREW HN GRAY

Edinburgh