THERE is a new missing million in Scotland. The phrase usually describes those who don’t vote, due to distrust and apathy. Now, I feel, it applies equally to the 1,018,322 people in Scotland who voted to leave the EU.

They represent a substantial minority, criss-crossing all traditional party loyalties and social groups. Yet with few respected figureheads in public life and a growing backlash to the realities of a hard, Tory Brexit, there’s a danger that they are shunned and stigmatised.

It doesn’t help that the story of all Brexit supporters has been firmly welded to the issue of immigration by UK press and politicians. It has become conventional wisdom now, as I feared, that voting leave was a mandate to bash foreigners and close borders.

This was predictable – as was the resulting surge in hate crime, economic uncertainty, and Tory incompetence. But this isn’t what Leave voters wanted. It’s important that those one million people in Scotland aren’t presented as a monolithic group. The Leavers I spoke to this week were horrified at the hard Tory Brexit, and no wonder.

Many Scottish nationalists and socialists backed an EU exit. They wanted sovereignty back from Brussels. They saw the EU institutions as undemocratic and unaccountable. The Common Fisheries Policy is held in contempt by those affected by its bureaucracy and quotas. Scottish voters saw dodgy EU apparatchik José Manuel Barroso’s contemptuous treatment of the independence question. We saw the financial bullying of Greece, and the shoddy, secretive corporate trade pacts the EU promotes.

Then the anti-EU campaign promised voters the earth. More money for the NHS. Greater democratic control. More fishing jobs. Substantial new powers for Scotland. The freedom to nationalise the railways and support domestic industry.

Combined with a lousy establishment Remain campaign, you can see why one million people in Scotland opted to leave. Syd from Dundee and Craig, a business owner near Aberdeen, told me they wanted to reject a “United States of Europe”. Others, like Liam from Cumbernauld and Pete from Glasgow, made an explicitly socialist case for exit. However, since the vote the ground has shifted. The Tories have grabbed control, exploited the crisis to attack migrants, backtracked on the NHS funding pledge, and have hardly given a second’s thought to the future of Scottish devolution or fishing.

No wonder just 16 per cent of people polled by YouGov support how the Tories are handling Brexit.

Janette from North Lanarkshire, who voted Leave, told me: “I’m concerned mostly over the Tories' and the press’s negative, disgusting portrayal of refugee and migrant issues.”

“Their messages on immigration are abhorrent,” added Ailsa from Millport, another Leave voter.

So while Theresa May and her ministers demonise foreigners, they do not have the backing of a monolithic million of anti-EU Scottish voters. The Tories and Ukip have claimed these votes as a mandate for a right-wing Brexit and to keep Scotland trapped within the UK come what may. But they haven’t asked the voters.

In reality Scottish Brexiteers include Scottish nationalists and socialists, who are now enraged at how the Tories are abusing the Brexit vote as a platform for extreme British nationalism.

Alan from Aberdeen, another Leave voter, summed up this sentiment to me: “Even though I am anti-EU I would rather be in an independent Scotland within the EU than a right-wing-led UK.”

Instead of banishing Scotland’s missing-million Eurosceptics from the conversation on our future, this is the coalition we must build. The hopes of EU exit are being betrayed one by one as the Tories descend into xenophobia and migrant-bashing. That is the independence movement’s opportunity.

Rather than focus the renewed debate on Scottish independence around the diffuse 62 per cent who voted to remain, there is a larger proportion of the population who rejected this Tory government and now want a future with economic security.

EU membership is now pivotal in this case. The Tories sabotaging the single market, rejecting freedom of movement, and dragging Britain to isolationism is unpopular across Scottish society. Their negotiations will be a betrayal of Remain and Leave voters in Scotland who were unaware of these plans before the referendum.

Nicola Sturgeon has attempted to make this case, drawing a distinction between a vote to leave the EU and leaving the European Single Market without public support. But the Tory power grab is far broader. Many Leave voters were angered by the abuse of power, inequality, and the mistreatment of other countries.

The Tories are now entrenching those same ills at Westminster and treating Leave voters as immigrant-obsessed bigots. This Daily Mail-inspired circus will continue for years, acting as a insult to the intellect of those who had justified concerns about the EU in Scotland.

That is their error. Remain v Leave voters is not the dividing line here. It is whether an independent Scotland is better than governance from Westminster. As the Tory Brexit betrayal gathers pace, many more voters will be ready for that opportunity.

Michael Gray @GrayInGlasgow is a journalist with CommonSpace.scot