Beware a closing of the British mind if we abandon European endeavours | Nick Cohen
Leaving the EU will produce the greatest loss of freedom since the Second World War. The freedom of businesses to trade with Europe dominates politics. But I suspect the loss of the freedom of the individual to live and work where they want in the EU, to fall in love and bring home whoever they choose and, above all, the freedom to think and study what they will and where they please will be the hardest to bear.
You can see Britain's horizons shrinking. The Liberal Democrats attempted to force ministers to commit to keeping Britain in the Erasmus programme that sends students to learn in EU universities. The government ordered its MPs to vote the motion down. One in six academic staff in higher education comes from elsewhere in the EU and science departments once had great success in persuading bright European PhD students to enrich research here. The Wellcome Trust tells me students are already looking elsewhere and we haven't even left yet; applications from the rest of the EU for its junior fellowships have fallen by 25% since the referendum. Yet when scientists ask government to keep the movement of researchers as painless as possible, it makes the right noises but does nothing.
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