A "disgusting and disgraceful trail of mistrust and racism" in Government is turning the UK into a "small and irrelevant backwater that will be shunned on the international stage", an MP has said.

SNP MP Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) said an increasingly hostile environment for immigrants in the UK is having damaging consequences.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Ms Brock said: "Enoch Powell was not simply a maverick shooting off his mouth.

"He was part of the mainstream, happy to strip other nations of skilled workers like nurses when it suited, equally happy to tell them to go home again when it looked like there was political capital in it.

"How things have changed and never change."

She added: "Labour's anti-immigration mugs were topped by the Tories' 'go home' vans.

"It is a disgusting and disgraceful trail of mistrust and racism that led from Churchill and Powell, through Blair and Brown, to this shabby lot disgracing the concept of government."

Ms Brock said "horrid and brutish British exceptionalism" was not only "cocking a snook to the world", but is damaging to the UK's economy.

MPs heard that Edinburgh's festivals are feeling the effects of the changing perception of the UK abroad, saying people are being put off visiting.

Ms Brock said the UK is already "seeing the effects of a Brexit whose full horror is still lurking round the corner".

She said actors travelling to the UK have found it difficult to gain access to the country, which is having an impact on Edinburgh's festivals.

Ms Brock said: "It suggests our nation is not a welcoming nation, is not a place that is open for business.

"If the performers can't get here, then how many more visas are being refused to international travellers who would want to take in the festivals and explore a bit more of the country, spending money as they go?"

She added: "Far from being a world power, the UK is turning into a small and irrelevant backwater that will be shunned on the international stage because it refuses to be on the international stage.

"This damaging xenophobic attitude to immigration isn't just a Brexit sideshow. It is a longstanding piece of arrogance and stupidity practised by successive UK governments.

"It is an insult to people and businesses who try to operate internationally, and is a sad little pastiche of a misremembered history being played out again and again as a farce by UK politicians who have no better idea."

By Josh Thomas