Wales after Brexit

Economy Picture of Welsh flag
InfographicsViewsAugust 2nd, 2016

Victoria Winckler explains why the Bevan Foundation’s latest report argues for a radical new approach after Brexit.

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By a clear majority and in an exceptionally high turn out, people in Wales voted to leave the EU on 23rd June.

The rejection of the European Union was about much more than wanting to stop the free movement of goods or even the free movement of people.  Perhaps the most powerful message from the polls was that people who voted leave felt pessimistic about life today and even more despondent about life in the future. Lord Ashcroft’s survey on polling day showed that nearly three quarters (73%) of ‘remain’ voters think life in Britain is better today than it was 30 years ago whereas a majority (58%) of those who voted to leave say it is worse.  Looking ahead, a small majority of those who voted to remain think that for most children growing up today, life will be better than it was for their parents but 61% of leave voters think life will be worse for their children. Powerful stuff.

What lies ahead is incredibly uncertain. A great deal depends on the terms under which the UK leaves the EU and engages with world trade. As much if not more depends on UK and Welsh Government policies and legislation after Brexit not only in respect of trade but also on key areas of EU law e.g. employment rights, environmental protection and procurement. And a lot depends on how businesses, both here and abroad, regard Wales and Britain as a place to set up shop. We simply don’t know.

We decided that Wales’ politicians, business and community leaders need to seize the agenda.

This goes beyond dealing with the economic impact – which could be substantial – and includes employment rights, the environment, public spending and services, and developing ideas for a new constitutional settlement and stronger democracy. This might even, in my personal view, include a federal system and a shift to proportional representation.

Six weeks after the referendum we don’t have all the answers – nobody does. But we hope that the principles and approaches we set out will shape the thinking of the new Assembly Brexit committee, as well as those of CBI Wales, FSB Wales, WLGA and WCVA to name but a few.

Read the full report – it’s only short – here.

Victoria Winckler is Director of the Bevan Foundation

This work was undertaken without external funding – if you’d like to support more like this why not subscribe or make a donation?

One Response

  1. Tim Williams says:

    It is good that the Bevan Foundation is trying to move the Welsh political class – tiny but real – on from the PTSD they seem to be suffering as a result of the Brexit vote. The trauma is deservedly double in Wales because it’s not just the loss which hurts ;it’s the understanding of how separate from the people of Wales that political class had become. They literally have learnt only in the last few months what country they live in. The best of them have understood this though a disturbingly high number seem to want to ignore the vote of the majority by whatever tactic they can muster. A very damaged Labour Party would in my view would be committing suicide by embarking on a coup against the democratic wishes of most Labour constituencies. Some shocking things have been said by Labour politicians since June – snobbish, elitist, anti-democratic stuff showing a fanaticism about the EU and a contempt for ordinary people – that have appalled many people I know in the Valleys which voted definitively against the Brussels junta. The latter is a word worth understanding by the way. The Labour Remoaners have been peddling the idea we live in a ‘post-fact’ period of politics which is another way of showing their contempt for their own ‘un-educated people’. They do this without even considering the non evidential basis of their fanaticism for the EU. As the Brussels elite tortured the Greek people and destroyed their parliamentary democracy where was the British left? Didn’t those facts appeal to them? When the EU became committed to neo-liberalism and then austerity, didn’t the British left notice ? As the EU pushed NATO towards an unnecessary conflict with Russia and a crazy policy towards Syria – supporting ISIS in Syria in reality – did anyone challenge the ‘post-fact’ nature of the EU’s aggressive foreign policy?

    Be that as it may, the reality is that however deluded the Welsh political class became they now have a real job to do. To run a post Brexit Wales. As they haven’t been terribly good at running a pre Brexit Wales , concerns are deep. Education, health and economic outcomes have gone south or nowhere since 1999 with Wales bumping along at the bottom of most league tables – with particular failures to move the dial in the Valleys and indeed seaside resorts throughout Wales: Rhyl and Rhymney remain in poor shape. The good news? Brexit might be the wake-up call a complacent Welsh elite needs. They are going to have to earn their keep and not rely on hand-outs from the EU. Indeed, they are going to have to become more imaginative in the use of their existing governance tools and resources and work a damn sight more energetically and creatively than they have done to co-produce effective economic renewal policies with the UK government. In my view they should also stop fixating about further devolution and use what they have much better: where is local government reform for example so that we can have bigger , better but fewer councils perhaps led by elected mayors? What happened to Welsh education , lost as it is in self-celebration and poor leadership combined with under-funding ?Why not use the tolls from the Severn Bridge for a bond to build the Valleys Metro? And why or why persist with the deluded M4 widening scheme when a) it won’t reduce congestion but will simply attract more traffic and b) it’s such a waste of scarce resources for so little return?

    Other devolved administrations across the world have done so much better than we have partly because we have allowed EU funding to put us to sleep and partly through having a very weak civil service – that knows enough only to say ‘no’ to better ideas than it has ever come up with – and an inexperienced series of governments who seem like the Bourbons to have ‘learnt nothing and forgotten nothing’ since 1999. Brexit Wales can and must be better. Perk up: as REM reminds us : ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine’. Reading what the Bevan Foundation writes would be a start to grappling with this new Welsh world after departing the old European one.

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