May misrepresents facts on immigration to help sell her Brexit withdrawal deal

Freedom of movement is one of the rights that have come with the EU citizenship that we are about to to lose.

Desperate to sell her withdrawal deal, Prime Minister Theresa May is then wrong to say EU citizens have been “jumping the queue” for UK entry, with that same pejorative rhetoric that she denounces “citizens of the world” as “citizens of nowhere”.

Both government and opposition politicians have consistently failed to explain that European Union rules on free movement only give incomers three months to stay, unless they have work or can show they can pay their way. Yet, while new statistics show that EU immigration has dropped to fewer than 75,000, non-eu immigration, under the sole control of the Home Office, has over the same period climbed to a quarter of a million. The EU has been cynically scapegoated in a debate based on false premises.

Misrepresenting the facts about immigration is pandering to prejudice, and fosters needless hostility to newcomers who overwhelmingly contribute both to national productivity and the tax base.

TONY O’DONNELL Dean Park Crescent, Edinburgh Keith Shortreed (Letters, 1 December) advises us to back the Brexit deal. But it won’t heal divisions because we are tied to the EU’S decisions on the backstop (with loss of sovereignty). If Theresa May goes back having failed to get her deal passed, last-minute negotiating could yet correct this. LMNS can be fruitful!

A Norway deal may be better than her one – as it has been fleshed out already and does not have restrictions on trade (unlike the vague political declaration the government brought back).

Theresa May has hinted at there being No Brexit. This means that an election or a Referendum is not far off her table.

We need a fair debate on staying versus leaving with No Deal – so I am okay about a final referendum.

Her Brexit deal cannot guarantee an end of austerity (which has caused great hardship and sense of grievance, affecting up to 60 per cent of people) because she concedes that it is likely that we could have a fall in GDP due to Brexit.

If the Tories needed austerity to calm their nerves when we were growing at 3 per cent, then how much more will they need it when we struggle to grow at 3 per cent?

ANDREW VASS Corbiehill Place, Edinburgh

Much has been said in these columns and elsewhere on the merits of whether local politician Nicola Sturgeon should join the Uk-wide TV debate on Brexit, alongside UK political leaders Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.

A possible benefit of the Scottish nationalist appearing would be to expose the hypocrisy of her EU stance to a wider UK audience.

Ms Sturgeon claims her objective is for the UK to remain in a strong, inter-connected relationship with the EU, yet many in Scotland now realise she longs for exactly the opposite. The SNP leader has long tried to use our EU departure to justify Scotland leaving the UK – so only the naive would believe she now seeks anything but a chaotic EU exit or No Deal for the UK, believing this would assist her separatist ambitions.

Ms Sturgeon’s raison d’etre is independence and she’ll use whatever she can, including Brexit, to try to achieve it. Could it be time the entire UK realised this?

MARTIN REDFERN Woodcroft Road, Edinburgh