WHEN a different deal on immigration was first proposed for Scotland after the EU referendum last year, the UK Government was quick to reject the idea. Theresa May made it clear one of her priorities for Brexit was reducing immigration and said there would be one deal for the UK. Even though Scotland has entirely different needs on migration, the prospect of any special deal seemed remote.

But that was a year ago and almost everything has changed since then. Until the General Election, the PM believed she would be in a strong position to impose a hard Brexit, but instead the Government is going into the negotiations with the EU this week battered and weakened. The Brexiters may still be asserting that the Government believes in the hard version of Brexit, but it has very little chance of ever being able to impose it.

What this means for Scotland is hard to say – no one knows how the talks will pan out, particularly now that the EU is in a greatly strengthened position – but one potential positive is that a differentiated deal on immigration is back on the table. The Brexiters have always suggested such a deal would be far too complicated, but the Scottish Government and others have made a convincing case for a different approach, with a number of possible models already suggested. One option, for example, might be for Scotland to issue its own national insurance numbers to citizens from other EU nations, allowing Scotland to retain freedom of movement with the rest of the EU even if it was restricted in the rest of the UK.

Another possible option is published in The Herald today as part of our Beyond Brexit series, which resumes today. The plan, by researchers on immigration at the University of Edinburgh, suggests a change to the Tier 2 working visas, which will apply to EU nationals after Brexit. After the UK leaves the EU, Scottish visas would allow EU workers to take up jobs in Scotland.

At first sight, the scheme might look politically impossible – would the hard Brexiters accept a Scottish “back door” to migrants? – but the UK Government’s perilous position means it can no longer have everything its own way. Differentiated schemes on immigration have also worked in other parts of the world and there is a precedent in Scotland itself with the Fresh Talent initiative. As for the need for a different Scottish approach to immigration, it is as strong as ever: in 2016 EU nationals accounted for half of Scotland’s net rise in population.

The question is whether the UK Government is ready to accept any of this. The continuing talk about a hard Brexit would suggest not, but that kind of rhetoric belongs to a time when the Government had a working majority in the Commons and those days are gone. The new reality is that the Government will have to find a compromise if it is to have any chance of success. The talk in public may still be about hard Brexit, but a soft Brexit that does not exclude a valuable group of EU citizens from Scotland is now the only viable option.