The Danger Of Emigration From Wales

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Roughly about this time last year I wrote about two people at work. One who was going to move to Australia. The other who said that (as I recall) only her children's stage at school stopped her from applying to move to Thailand.

Well another example occurred yesterday (and yes I know it's a low sample base but I'll come back to that later).

So I see this person, a young man I've known on a "How are you?" basis since I started this job a few years back. It's the first thing I ask since I've not seen him for a while. General chit chat ensues. Until he suddenly drops the surprising news that he's moving to Cyprus at the end of the month.

Now I know that this is not scientific. But it's striking to me that of the only people I know who have had the opportunity to move away from Britain two have taken the chance to go and only family circumstances of the third has stopped the other from following suit.

And of course if this most unscientific of samples is the first indicator of a trend then clearly Brexit is the cause. People have seen the economic future that leaving the EU will cause and they don't like it. Good people were misled into voting leave. And there's no apparent way to stop that now.

But what they have also probably noticed is the way some people have become much colder, more selfish since Brexit. Jackboot politics fuelled by jackboot journalism, despite being weakened by June's election, still has the power to weald damage. We all know that the Brexit result has given some people the feeling of being morally entitled to be racist to people whose only "crime" is being Polish.

It does though work both ways. Regular readers will remember my posts concerning the worries I have regarding the Ford Engine plant in Bridgend. Well I've got more than one response on Twitter along the lines of "Well Bridgend voted Leave so they just have to accept the consequences".

Now leaving aside the fact that if an area voted Leave it doesn't mean the people in the plant did. What this shows is a growing lack of compassion. Something that will not serve Britain well in the future.

If a drip of emigration becomes a flood Wales will have the danger of becoming what Ireland was during the last financial troubles and it will be mainly the young that will go. For what they will see is a country on the drift towards decline. With no clear solution in sight they will understandably think of their futures first and Leave.

The only clear future for Wales in this Brexit age is independence. For then everybody will see that there is a purpose in staying. The rebirth of a nation will not be simple, or easy, or without errors along the way. But the consequences of doing nothing will be even worse.

Until the next time.