Ifan Morgan Jones

Wales has found itself shackled to a Tory government that’s about to jump off a financial cliff.

Theresa May has told the UK to prepare for a ‘no deal’ Brexit. This is like an airplane pilot telling you: ‘I’m just going to crash into that mountainside over there, I advise you to brace for impact.’

A ‘no deal’ Brexit would be ruinous for the UK economy, but for Wales even more so. It would wipe out the aviation sector – that’s Airbus gone from the north-east.

The steel industry – already hanging by a thread – would face crippling tariffs.

These are just prominent examples. No single community would be spared. Almost 70% of Welsh exports go to the EU.

Even the Tory Chancellor, Philip Hammond, who is in charge of the facts and figures, not the wishful thinking, has said that it would be a “very, very bad outcome”.

That’s a crippling depression to you and me. Our jobs, our families, our communities being stripped of wealth, for no good reason.

This is all on top of the crunch that the economy would suffer anyway, even if we came to a deal with the EU.

Parts of Wales are already the poorest in western Europe. If the UK Government gets its way, perhaps we could add eastern Europe too.

Some will claim that Theresa May’s bluffing – that it’s all a ruse to get her way with the EU. But it’s not the EU that has a lot to lose here.

May keeps insisting that the EU accept a deal that it’s simply not in their interest to accept, and she will then blame the UK’s own pig-headedness on the EU.

The UK has already done itself an awful lot of harm over Brexit, and for no good reason. Are we confident that it won’t take that final step off the cliff, just to satisfy a few rebellious backbenchers?

A number of prominent Tory Eurosceptics are already arguing for a ‘no deal’ Brexit. Not as a last resort but as a preferred solution.

Lemmings

It would be reassuring to think that this is simply idiocy. That it’s British nationalism that has got out of hand, whipped up by the Mail and Express.

But there may well be more sinister forces at work here. Why is British nationalism being whipped up to lead the public along this destructive path?

The answer that it’s just a tool by the elite to manipulate the public to get what they want.

Just like they used the financial crash as an excuse to ram through crippling austerity, Britain’s ruling class want a cataclysmic economic shock that will justify extreme measures to ‘save the country’.

The idea isn’t, in fact, to ‘take back control’ for the people of the UK but to give it all away – we will all be rudderless ships bobbing on a neo-liberal sea.

Rules are regulations will be scaled back to ‘save the economy’, but with the aim of serving the business interests of a self-serving elite.

We’re used to the UK government not caring about Wales. But they no longer seem to care about anyone.

I’m sure a lot of people reading this – if they bothered reading past the headline – will already be scribbling away in the comments: ‘Wales voted for Brexit!’

Well, we didn’t vote for this Brexit. And if you have an ounce of patriotism and love for your fellow man in your body you won’t want to follow England, lemming-like, off this cliff.

Let’s swallow our pride and admit that the Farages and Johnsons of this world duped and misled our nation.

To think that these people wanted what was best for Wales, after centuries of neglect, was at best naive.

There’s only one answer now. You can vote for a different party, but the same destructive British elite will always get in. You can’t vote away the tabloids and the billionaires that own them.

Welsh Independence is the airlock through which we can flush them out once and for all.