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This morning I will get up early to cheer Wales against the All Blacks and this afternoon I will be rooting for Wales against Northern Ireland.

Anthem, dragons, red shirts. Simple sporting allegiance feels the only straightforward characteristic of Welsh identity at the moment. After yesterday’s seismic events, my sense of self as a Welsh person has been shaken to the core.

So given Wales’s overwhelming support for exiting the EU – 17 of the 22 local areas voted Leave – what kind of country are we? We love our reputation for warmth, openness, hospitality. So much friendlier than the cold Saxons next door, we boast. We’ll Keep A Welcome In The Hillside, we croon with nostalgic emotion.

Except we don’t really keep a welcome do we? Not any more. Immigration dominated the EU referendum debate in Wales – a country that conveniently forgot it has the lowest rates of immigration in the UK.

'Fearful attitude'

But fact never got in the way of fear. Every vox pop on a Valleys street had someone expressing their terror that an immigrant would take their job, nick their school places, clog up their NHS – the same NHS that in Wales values its immigrant staff.

(Also the same NHS, by the way, that was promised £350m a week by the Leave Campaign. They even emblazoned this pledge on their battle bus. But within hours of victory Nigel Farage admitted it was all a mistake.)

The fearful attitude to immigration that played its part in Wales’s Brexit stance is at odds with my concept of a Valleys identity. Raised a Rhondda Catholic, I grew up in a community within a community where my friends’ grandparents spoke in Polish and Italian or with Irish accents in church on Sunday but everyone identified as Welsh too.

We were proud of our diversity. After all, Rhondda was the place that had the twin statistics that showed its unique identity was formed by immigration. The 1901 census records that it is the part of Wales that had the most people born elsewhere living in its environs. In 2001 the census showed it is the part of Wales that had the most people born there who still lived there. Within 100 years a population that flocked from across Europe had created a community that was rooted to the Rhondda.

So the irony that fear of outsiders was such a heavy influence in the referendum voting patterns of these former Valleys melting pots is painful.

But history has also shown that communities hit by deprivation and industrial decline are encouraged to find scapegoats beyond the forces that are really responsible for their problems. And there is no easier target than the immigrant.

'Let's not kid ourselves'

How else have perceptions of Welshness been skewed by the results of the EU Referendum? Well let’s not kid ourselves that we identify with our Celtic cousins after this. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to Remain. Liverpool, the English city which arguably has the strongest bonds of culture and geography with Wales, also opted to stay. But the majority of Welsh voters threw in their lot ideologically with Middle England.

Between watching the pound fall faster than Tim Peake in a Soyuz capsule, the shock of Swansea’s Brexit preference and listening to Farage’s crass war metaphors, one of the most depressing moments of the night came when Christine Hamilton tweeted her congratulations to Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire on their Leave vote. Katie Hopkins will start being nice about us at this rate. What a horrific thought.

But Welsh Leavers weren’t coming from the same comfortable position of Middle England. This, we were repeatedly told, was a protest vote. Indeed, one rather panicked Welsh Brexit voter interviewed yesterday morning was shocked with the result, explaining he supported Remain but wanted to make a protest vote.

And protest is a part of Welsh identity – from the Chartists to the Miners’ Strike via Greenham Common, we have a heritage of fighting for things that matter. This is also not the first time when our working classes have felt alienated, disenfranchised and forgotten. Not to mention subject to the most severe poverty and deprivation.

But consider how historically they registered their protest with characteristic Welsh fire. In 1935 – when unemployment hit 90% and benefits were slashed – 300,000 South Walians took to the streets and forced a government U-turn on this humiliating means-tested system.

However, in the Wales of 2016 “protest” takes the form of a Brexit vote that is believed to be against the elites and the establishment but is only rejecting the EU, which has ensured Wales has received more money than any other part of the UK.

'No-one listened to us'

Welsh Leavers have picked the wrong fight and voted against their own interests. Those of us who tried to point out the dangers of a Welsh Brexit were dismissed as patronising and metropolitan. God forbid we actually care that people from our own communities who are already suffering extreme economic hardship will be even worse off.

No-one listened to us, say the protest voters. But they did hear those who shouted loudest. And what a cacophony it was surrounding a referendum that was only ever held to decide a blue-on-blue ideological spat. While the Tories fought each other and Jeremy Corbyn proved an insipid and reluctant Remainer, Ukip stepped in to fill the vacuum with a campaign that bordered on toxic.

Welsh politicians and the Welsh media must also reflect on how effectively they communicate with those who feel politically estranged as the latter were swamped with messages from the UK media and right-wing politicians that bore no relevance to Wales.

There has been no shortage of engagement with politics in recent weeks with a turnout that a Welsh Assembly election can only dream of but disaffection and division remains. There is a leadership void, particularly where UK Labour is concerned. Someone we can trust and be inspired by must emerge as we have to embrace this change and ensure Wales gets the best out of it – whatever that Wales now is.