Dr Lee Jones was amongst 15 academics to write to The Guardian letters arguing that ‘with a clean sovereign Brexit, British universities get the best of both worlds’. The letter reads: “The idea that whole countries should be forced into political servitude in order to qualify for academic or scientific mutual exchange is ridiculous, illogical and completely without evidence. No country has ever had to accept this from the EU before. The first major act of the May government was to pledge to support a Swiss-style payment into mutual academic research programmes, which answers the Russell Group’s funding complaints.”