Short #Brexit thread: There's an absurd notion snowballing in hysterical columns and pseudo-reporting about Britain becoming somehow less liberal, less open, more authoritarian and less friendly to immigrants compared to #EU nations because of #Brexit.

https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1123970164054200322

But in fact anyone who's ever lived on the continent knows that Britain is and remains a beacon of liberalism, integration and tolerance. Leading pundits/reporters covering #Brexit are actual EU foreigners based in Britain - imagine that ever happening in Germany or France?

I've sat on high-profile #Brexit panels/discussions in London where majority of speakers, yours truly included, spoke English with a thick accent. Imagine that in Germany, Italy? In fact continental colleagues are often mystified about foreigners working in senior UK media jobs

Britain's political class may have been exposed by #Brexit. But in countries like Germany senior ministers can say stuff about Muslims etc that would be unimaginable in the UK, where cops wearing headscarfs and turbans are a common and uncontroversial sight.

As a perpetual immigrant, I've lived in a few European countries and I've not actually encountered a society where one is more quickly accepted as a foreigner than in Britain, socially or in the workplace (and no reason to doubt that's also the case for vulnerable immigrants).

Meanwhile, far-Right nationalists inject their policy into the mainstream across Europe - that is if they are not in government already. In Italy, leaders tweet Mussolini quotes; in Germany, actual Nazis of all sorts march rather frequently welt.de/politik/deutsc…