According to the YouGov poll in Scotland, the survey found only 5% of the 1,100 Scottish sample want to see immigration increased.

And within the 64% for reduction, 15% of the total want to see immigration stopped altogether.

So if you listen to the rhetoric in Holyrood, then yes, you would be surprised, because there’s a cross-party consensus in favour of increasing immigration.

The agreement across parties is not quite as firm as it was when Jack McConnell seized the issue of Scotland’s demographic challenge and made the case for more immigrants.

Some of his Labour colleagues at Westminster were sceptical about the then first minister’s initiative. But other parties at Holyrood joined the Labour-Lib Dem administration in supporting the case.

It created one of the many tense encounters between the Labour first minister and the Labour administrations in Westminster.

This was over the ‘Fresh Talent’ initiative – giving a special right to non-European Union students at Scottish universities to have a work permit for a limited period after graduation.

By the standards of the Smith Commission, such divergence now seems no big deal. Yet the initiative was ended. Universities say it has put them at a significant disadvantage in recruiting students from Asia.

And attempts to bring it back, even with the support of prominent Scottish Conservatives, are understood to be getting nowhere in Whitehall.