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Boffins biff Boris over Brexit. That headline sums up the reaction of one of Britain’s most distinguished Nobel laureates to the Prime Minister’s claim that he will reform immigration rules

to attract “the best minds from around the world” after Brexit. What makes the rebuff particularly awkward is that he has repeatedly lauded the discovery of graphene by the scientist in

question. No sooner had the Prime Minister praised Professor Sir Andre Gleim as an example of how “our scientists have helped to transform the world for the better”, than he was blown a

resounding raspberry by the physicist. “The Government may try and reduce barriers to entry for scientists but they cannot reduce turmoil that would be caused to science in the UK by a

no-deal Brexit,” Sir Andre said. “Scientists are not fools. They know that turmoil is inevitable for many years.” Perhaps even more damning was the fact that Sir Andre’s collaborator Sir

Konstantin Novoselov, with whom he shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 2010, has left Manchester University, where they made the discovery. “Konstantin has already left the UK to work in

Singapore,” he said. “I think that tells you everything you need to know.” The notion of world-class scientists abandoning Britain in anticipation of a no-deal Brexit is not merely a

personal humiliation for the Prime Minister, who has placed more emphasis than his Tory predecessors on our status as a “global science superpower”. More seriously, it is potentially

disastrous for the country’s long-term future. Boris Johnson is belatedly lifting the Home Office cap on exceptional talent from its present level of 2,000 individuals per annum, in order,

he says, to “turn the UK into a kind of supercharged magnet, drawing scientists like iron filings from around the world”. Yet this move was received dismissively by Sir Venki Ramakrishnan,

President of the Royal Society, and Lord Rees, the Astronomer Royal. To them and the great majority of their colleagues, there is nothing magnetic about a post-Brexit Britain, cut off from

the EU’s Horizon Europe funding programme and repelling rather than attracting European talent. About half of the 211,000 scientists working here come from EU countries. Yet are the boffins

right to be predicting a grim outlook for British science? Take Gleim and Novoselov, the geniuses who gave the world graphene. Both Russian-born, they came to Britain via The Netherlands,

where Sir Andre emigrated from the Soviet Union and later supervised Sir Konstantin’s doctoral dissertation. Like most people with dual citizenship, Sir Andre (who is Anglo-Dutch) takes

Brexit personally. But when he says that his colleague’s decision to move to Singapore “tells you everything you need to know” about Brexit’s impact on British science, one must respectfully

beg to differ. Sir Konstantin relocated only this year, not (as the_ Times_ claims) after the 2016 referendum, and there may be other reasons besides Brexit for his decision. He is also the

first Nobel laureate ever to be based in Singapore. Britain has produced more Nobel laureates than any other country except the US, many of them born elsewhere but attracted by the quality

of research at British universities. It is noticeable that Sir Konstantin chose not to move to Europe, but to a free-trading, low tax state that has been seen by some as a model for

post-Brexit Britain. If scientists are voting with their feet, they are not necessarily doing so for the EU. As long as the best British universities continue to outclass their Continental

competitors in the world rankings, they are likely to weather the coming storm. It is no surprise that scientists, like their colleagues in the humanities, dislike Brexit and deride Boris. A

vanishingly small proportion of academics admit to Conservative sympathies and that monoculture is unlikely to change any time soon. But many are conservative in the sense that they love

order and abhor change. Sir Andre Gleim fears “turmoil” after a “disorderly” Brexit. He and his colleagues will undoubtedly face huge challenges and Britain may indeed suffer what has long

been called “the brain drain”. But such a loss of talent is more likely to go to the US or the Far East than to Europe. And there is every chance that it will be temporary. A revealing

comparison is with Israel, whose people have survived genocide, war and terrorism, not to mention attempts to isolate them by the BDS movement. Israel now attracts global, as well as

home-grown talent and has had more Nobel laureates (12) than China or India. If Israel can overcome far greater adversities in a hostile environment, there is no reason why the UK — with ten

times the population, plus a long and uniquely rich tradition of intellectual inquiry — should not thrive outside the EU. Boris must persist in his message that Britain is open for science,

but his actions will speak louder than his words.