THERE are thee million EU citizens living in Britain, of whom 2.15 million are in employment.
By contrast there are only 1.2 million British citizens living in the EU of whom only 800,000 are working, as quoted by Migration Watch.
Simple arithmetic shows that the UK’s economy is potentially much more vulnerable to the effects of a loss of EU workers following a ‘bad’ Brexit than the other way round.
However this is not at all the picture being painted by Theresa May’s government, spokespersons from which have regularly inflated the number of British workers in the EU to two million.
They have argued that no guarantee can be extended to EU citizens in Britain until EU countries extend the same guarantees.
This belies the real situation: Britain wants to leave the EU, not the other way round.
Against this backdrop, the Government’s universities minister, Jo Johnson, was invited to attend a ceremony marking the foundation of a new building in Oxford’s Science Park.
Knowing that the university has uttered dire warnings if Brexit ends badly, he was quite content to trot out the tired mantra that “we will guarantee those rights as soon as other countries offer the same reciprocal guarantees”.
In a week when ‘Big Bro’ has been indulging in sabre-rattling against the Spaniards over Gibraltar, is it any surprise that foreign (and not just EU!) nationals in Britain are looking abroad for a way out of the Brexit nightmare?
JONATHAN SAUNDERS
Ramsay Road, Oxford
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