I was driving back to Scotland up the M1 when I heard the traffic reports of chaos ahead.

No point sitting in a jam for hours, so I pulled off the motorway and headed for Coventry. Might as well take a look at the cathedral and have something to eat.

Walking around the city centre with its concrete plazas and dreary shopping centres, I was struck by how, well, ethnic it appeared. To be blunt: there were very few white faces. It almost didn't feel like an English city. The majority of passers-by looked Asian or Afro-Caribbean. I'd seen something similar in some wealthy areas of London but nothing like this.

Casual racism alert! These "ethnic" people were almost certainly British citizens, most of whom had probably been born here. Coventry was one of the key centres of Asian and Caribbean immigration after the Second World War when Britain needed workers for its booming factories and growing public services. Ministers, including Enoch Powell, advertised throughout the West Indies and the Commonwealth for people to come and work here.

Coventry had one of the first mosques in Britain, established in Eagle Street in 1960. It is a tribute to the tolerance of Britain's working class that it allowed wages to be depressed and communities to be transformed without turning in large numbers to racist politics; especially after Coventry went into steep economic decline in the 1980s and had some of the highest unemployment rates in the country. The 33% of Coventrians who are identified as "minority ethnic" are overwhelmingly located in working class districts. Middle class Britons exercise racial exclusion through property prices.

But it looks as if the era of tolerance may be over. We learned this week from the latest British Social Attitudes Survey that 77% of British voters want immigration to be curbed. This isn't entirely got up by the press, though certain publications shamelessly exploit latent racism. Millions of ethnic Britons, we are told, feel that they are no longer living in the same country they were born into and governments pulled the wool over their eyes.

At least this is how the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson tells it in his documentary "The Truth about Immigration", which argues that race is at the top of the political agenda in 2014. And it is going to stay there if only because of the rise of Ukip's Nigel Farage. For the first time in my lifetime it is socially acceptable to say you want to lock the door and keep foreigners out. Even 69% of Scots apparently think immigration should be curbed though, as I'll explain, that may not be quite as significant as it seems.

My views on immigration are very simple: we need more of it. Britain has an ageing population and that means fewer people of working age. Scotland is ageing faster than England because we are living longer and more young people migrate from Scotland. The only way to rebalance the population and generate the tax revenues to pay for this expensive grey demographic is through immigration. Migrants are mostly young, they invariably work and they pay their taxes.

Yes,there is a problem of workers in certain low-skilled occupations being undercut by migrants who regard the minimum wage as a living wage. The Bank of England said inflation was capped in Britain in the early years of this century because of high immigration, which is another way of saying the same thing. But that doesn't alter the fact there is no economic alternative to immigration, in the medium term at least.

If we want to keep public services like the NHS intact in future, immigration is inevitable, both to provide the workers employed in those services and to generate the tax revenues that will pay for them. We can't have it both ways. We can't complain about there not being enough young taxpaying workers in Scotland and then say we don't want them if they happen to be Polish. The only major party that seems to fully grasp this is the SNP, which is in many ways remarkable. Most nationalist parties in Europe are hostile to immigration, like Finland's True Finns; Belgium's Vlaams Blok; and our own British National Party and Ukip. However, many Unionists have sought to attack the SNP's liberal open borders policy as another "indy danger'.

Better Together say that, if Scotland votes Yes to independence and tries to allow more immigrants to stay here, England will erect border posts to keep them out. I find this hard to believe. It is a slur on English people, though Home Secretary Theresa May did say as much in 2012: "Joining Europe's borderless Schengen area could open Scotland's border up to mass immigration. There could very well be some sort of border checks."

But this scare is double-edged. Clearly, if Scotland votes No in September it risks being subject to UK immigration policies that are not only incompatible with membership of Europe but are also contrary to the interests of the Scottish economy. Unionists made much of John Swinney's so-called "secret report" last year on the fiscal challenges of an ageing population. But that financial hole can only be filled, surely, by taxes generated by young migrant workers.

Moreover, the revolt against migrants in England has placed Scotland in the departure lounge of the EU. The immigration controls advocated by Nigel Farage and Conservatives like Boris Johnson are incompatible with EU membershp. Free movement is a fundamental principle of Europe's constitution and David Cameron is unlikely to have it altered, or "repatriated".

The way things are going, the moves to curb European migrants can only lead to "Brexit" in the In/Out referendum on UK membership in 2017. Mr Farage knows that stopping immigration doesn't make economic sense. "I'd rather be poorer than have more immigrants," he says with candour. According to the Social Attitudes Survey, 69% of Scots agree with him. But it's not quite as it appears. Scots clearly do not see immigration and Europe as defining issues, one reason Scotland has no significant party of the political Right. The Scottish Tories have only one MP and Ukip has no representation in Scotland and generally loses its deposit in elections. Scotland's political culture is very different from England's because the major parties are pro-European and, broadly, pro-immigration.

Some English commentators say this is because Scotland didn't experience Coventry-style immigration and is still very white, which is true. No-one is quite sure why mass Commonwealth immigration stopped at the Border, but it did. I believe this has been to Scotland's loss, culturally and economically. Immigration, within reasonable limits, increases diversity and promotes enterprise and original thinking. Look at America, land of the immigrant for 400 years. It didn't do them any harm.

But make no mistake. British attitudes to immigration have changed fundamentally, at least south of the border. The era of multiculturalism is over and the white backlash has begun. Britain is heading out of Europe and into the politics of race.