Take a bow Christine Jardine. The Lib Dem MP for Edinburgh West does a nice line in dry humour and deployed it deftly on BBC Scotland during an angry exchange between the Tories’ Stephen Kerr and the Greens’ Patrick Harvie. Kerr, under pressure over the huge rise in immigration during Boris Johnson’s period of office, deflected that pressure by accusing the Lib Dems and Greens of branding “ordinary working people” racist if they were concerned about immigration. This straw man tactic brought groans from the other two. In no time, Harvie and Kerr were at each other’s throats, with Harvie highlighting the racist abuse endured by social care workers only for a flustered Kerr to accuse the Greens of wanting “open borders”.

“This,” said a visibly weary Jardine, “is the most depressing conversation I’ve been involved in in politics for a long time.” We viewers felt exactly the same way.

Of all the polarised issues in this divided age, immigration is possibly the most frustrating. The issue is complex but the debate doesn’t allow for nuance. The Tories while in government railed against small boats and a supposed “invasion” via the south coast of England, while quietly allowing net immigration to rise to nearly a million in 2023. That underlines two key truths: that the UK economy and public sector need immigrants (the vast majority of the rise after Brexit was down to work and study visas willingly given) but politicians, particularly right-wing ones, find it much easier to distort the debate and attack immigrants rather than explain why they have an important part to play.

So it’s been refreshing to see SNP minister Mairi McAllan unambiguously doing a sales job on........

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