So, the starting-gun has been fired for the #EUref. In that context, I read with dismay (Cameron’s EU talks branded a theatrical sideshow by Labour leader, 18 February) that Jeremy Corbyn is making a strong case for continued large-scale European migration into this country. I fail to understand how the Labour leader arguing for many more Europeans to come to this country is going to help with any of the following serious problems.

1) Large-scale migration between economically unequal countries means a permanent brain-drain from the poorer to the richer country. Are we really helping Poland, Lithuania etc by stripping them of their brightest and best?

2) A rising labour force is a boss’s charter: it’s the best way to suppress wages. This is why the biggest fans of opening our borders to Europe are large UK-based corporations. How does a Labour leader expect to win support from working people when he acts as the brilliant ally of their class-enemies?

3) This country has so far accepted a shamefully low number of refugees from war-torn and drought-stricken parts of the Middle East and North Africa. How does Corbyn expect to drum up support for us behaving decently toward refugees – letting more in – when the country is already having to deal with a net influx of hundreds of thousands of European economic migrants annually, migrants whose case for needing to be here is, to put it mildly, less pressing than that of (say) desperate Syrian orphans?

It’s high time for Greens and the left to reassess their (our) tacit support for open borders. Advocating continued mass migration will terminally alienate ordinary working people in this country – and for good reason. If Greens and Labour really want the EU referendum to be won, they simply have to change their stance on this question.

Rupert Read

Green party member, Norwich

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