So we have voted in favour of leave . Where Leave has won the EU referendum campaign in Wales - and across the UK - with all Welsh council areas declared.
Some 854,572 (52.5%) voters in Wales chose to leave the EU, compared to 772,347 (47.5%) supporting Remain.
The leader of the Welsh Conservatives and Leave supporter Andrew RT Davies said the "fault lines" of Welsh politics had changed forever.
But Plaid Cymru's Simon Thomas said we were entering "disturbing territory".
The vast bulk of Wales' council areas, many of them Labour-supporting, voted for Leave, with a majority in 17 backing Brexit.
Only five areas - Gwynedd, Cardiff, Ceredigion, the Vale of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire - voted for Remain.
Welsh Labour In campaign manager Lord Hain said the Tories invited a kicking in the poll "and are being given it".
Leave has built an insurmountable lead in the race - with the BBC forecasting a win for Leave by 52% to 48%.
Scotland however has voted Scotland has voted in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38% - with all 32 council areas backing Remain. raising the prospect of Scotland being taken out of the EU against its will.
Which leaves the question what happens to Wales in the wake of a Tsunami that has hit these islands
Will we see decades of Right Wing Government that demonises Immigrants and the less well off often pitting the two against each other.
Will we go into recession as predicted by many i the Remain camp and see further Austerity cuts ? Cuts which nay well affect the very Working Class voters who voted for a Brexit
Will we see the sort of funding that Wales get from the EU or will it be retained by Westminster to fund Tax cuts?
Will Welsh Labour finally see that the interest of Wales can only come from inside Wales and not Westminster?
We now have Two years while the UK and EU negotiate Brexit , It ay mean that the EU may seek to capitulate and seek to return many powers to the member states in the belief that there could be a second referendum to approve the final agreement. Especially as they may well be seeing a Domino effect from other Nations wishing to leave.
But for us we need to ensure that Wales is not left out from these negotiations . We have alot to lose and very little to win.
1 comment:
Bitterly disappointing to see the electorate in wales broadly voting along similar lines as the electorate in england (or england outside london rather). A result made even more depressing - not to say embarrassing - by the fact that voters in both scotland and northern ireland strongly voted to stay in. It means we can no longer speak of england 'dragging wales out of the eu against its will'. But recent elections in 2014 and 2015 should have warned us that politically speaking wales is no longer as different from england as it once was.
Where this leaves wales - and its political and economic future - is anyone's guess. But you dont have to be mystic meg to predict that the immediate prospects for wales are not good. And it's a crazy irony that those communities in wales that will suffer most as a consequence of this result will be those parts of wales (like RCT,Caerphilly and Torfaen)which most enthusiastically swallowed the lies of 'bojo' and farage and co.
And i have to say i dont think peter hain's line about such votes in wales being explained by people wanting to give david cameron a kicking will do - from my own experiences campaigning in swansea many of those voting leave were motivated by the same hostility towards immigrants and the same barely disguised racism as voters in places like barnsley and sunderland evidently were.
What does this vote say about wales as a nation? And what does it say about the direction wales going in as a nation? I think it strongly suggests Wales isnt gong in the direction people like you and i would like glyn.Indeed when surveying yesterday's results in wales you could be forgiven for thinking that wales is just another part of england, and that we only actually exist as a 'nation' on the rugby and football fields. Certainly the aim of a self governing Wales in the EU looks a million miles away.
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