OFTEN the best way of understanding someone else’s point of view is to reverse the proposition in question.

So, imagine if you will, the French government tweeting out a letter in public suggesting one of the best ways to sort out the current asylum seeking crisis would be to station French troops and border control officials on British beaches to stop anyone trying to take a boat to France.

You can readily suppose with what glee that suggestion would be received in ­Farageland, and all the other redoubts ­occupied by the worst kind of xenophobic little Englanders. It seems that taking back control in post Brexit Britain consists of begging the folks in whose onion soup we have just spat to help us out of a mess.

Herewith a few facts which would seem to have escaped that cuddly Home ­Secretary, whose troops are so enamoured of her performance that there is apparently an unprecedented level of staff churn in the Home Office.

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The UK is not being “swamped” by asylum seekers to use that unfortunate Thatcherian term. Indeed thanks to a ­mixture of Covid and a system of ­discouraging applications which has forced refugees into illegal and life threatening alternatives, the numbers are down by almost a quarter in the latest figures, published on Friday.

Plus the disappearance of many ­European citizens from our shores post Brexit has meant that the number of foreign born residents has dropped.

The myth of Britain being a place of ­caring sanctuary for “tired and huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is just that. Pure myth. Many European countries, most notably Germany, take many times more migrants than we do.

You have to be pretty desperate to put your own, and often your family’s life at self evident risk by boarding a crowded and wholly unsuitable craft and be launched into the busiest of shipping lanes in mid winter.

Of course the human traffickers are ­despicable, but the demand for their ­services has been created by a global ­explosion in displaced people due to war and famine, poverty and need, allied to one of the most hostile, mean spirited UK Governments in living memory.

A government which has created a nasty country in its own image. Which cut the foreign aid budget at a time of maximum need despite a promise never to do so. Which even now is putting a bill through the Commons which would criminalise anyone coming to these shores without permission and throw them in jail.

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Which has suggested it could ­outsource asylum “processing” – and how ugly is that word? – to places as various as ­Ascension Island and Albania. Which changed its accommodation policies ­during Covid, housing asylum seekers in what a High Court judge ruled was ­“unsafe and squalid” ex army barracks.

The judge noted that the Home ­Office had “failed to look after ­vulnerable ­people” and that the lack of safety ­measures meant there was “a ­significant risk of injury or death from fires or ­Covid”.

Meanwhile British citizens, whose ­parents came here on the Windrush at our behest, who have lived and worked here since childhood, still wait for ­compensation after losing all their rights and sometimes being deported to lands they barely know. Some have died ­waiting.

Meanwhile that Afghan resettlement Scheme, bragged about by the last ­Foreign Secretary, has yet to be set up. It took ­heroics by individuals and charities to try and find homes and hearths for some of the people we betrayed.

As the latest spat with France ­underlines, the Johnson government has perfected the art of opening its mouth before its brain is engaged. Always ­supposing the latter is actually a functioning organ. The way it conducted itself during the Brexit negotiations, the way it still is over the highly sensitive situation in Northern Ireland, suggests that bulls in china shops should start worrying about serious competition.

Where sensitivity is needed, it ­substitutes bellicose blustering. Where delicate diplomacy is called for, it uses the megaphone variety. And in a world crying out for compassion and understanding it glories in becoming the unloved bovver boy of international relations.

Boris Johnson’s government is the ­Millwall of modern politics “nobody likes us and we don’t care”.

Except that many of the people forced to accept this government of all the non discernible talents do care. They care that the one thing which does trickle down from the top is reputational ­damage. ­Johnson got the top job in his party through a tiny minority of voters who happened to be card carrying ­Conservatives.

He got and kept the top job in ­ Westminster by a toxic mix of manipulation, manoeuvring, and ­mendacity. Even in 2019 when he ­sloganiSed his way to a sizeable ­majority, only 43% of the voting public gave him their cross. And that was up against ­Jeremy Corbyn, whom only some elements of his own party could actually visualise in Number 10.

Here in Scotland we live with the ­unpalatable fact of being “governed” by a party in whom we have not placed our trust since the mid 1950’s. A party which contrived to halve its own meagre Westminster representation. Which only has a number of bums on Holyrood seats thanks to a system of devolution which it fought tooth and nail. Personally I find it totally intolerable that we should have this rag tag and bile tailed platoon hold any kind of sway over our future.

Scotland is not without its own matched set of prejudices. We too harbour some racists, and most certainly some knuckle dragging sectarian bampots.

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But what we do have is a government which openly asserts that it wants to stop the inhumane Home Office writ ­continuing to run in Scotland, and which re-iterates, at every opportunity, how ­welcome new Scots are in the land in which they have been resettled, or where they have chosen to make their home and their future. I like that in a government.

We also have a healthy chunk of ­citizens who remember how ­important our ­common humanity is, and how much ­better a country we live in when we ­exercise and cherish it. I love both the name and the ethos of Glasgow’s ­Refuweegee which, when it set up shop in 2015, proudly put this on its website: “REFUWEEGEE (ref-u-wee-gee) noun. A person who, on arrival in Glasgow, is ­embraced by the people of the city. A ­person considered to be local.” And it added “we’re all fae somewhere”.

That’s the kind of spirit, the kind of ­morality, I want in my country. What about the economic migrants, cry those who cheerfully suggest sending anyone with the temerity to want to come here back where they belong.

Mostly they belong to places where there is no future for them. Many have friends and relatives here. And when, anyway, did economic migration become a crime? Scots have been doing it for generations. America, Canada and Australia were built on it.

Mind you when folks from some parts of the UK decide to decamp they’re never economic migrants. Nothing so vulgar. Ex Pats, proudly flying the flag for the country they cheerfully left. Ensuring that in some foreign supermarkets there lies a corner which will be forever England. None of that foreign muck in the baked beans, and chocolate digestive aisle.

The Johnson government, far from ­entrenching a precious Union, has made many people frankly ashamed to be ­British. Ashamed to be linked, however loosely, to a government which does ­appalling things in their name.

I don’t expect an independent ­Scotland to be a thing of effortless virtue. I do expect it to be manifestly more decent, more ­empathetic, more ­compassionate and more welcoming than the UK ­Government currently is. After all, the bar is not high.