To wonder wtf is going on in Wales?

[brexitstolemyfuture]

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tories-labour-poll-wales-yogov-majority-seats-first-time-century-a7699776.html%3famp

Tories predicted to get a majority for the first time in a century. I thought this was fake news, but no it's real

I am in North Wales and (excuse my language) my area would be a shit hole without EU funding. We have very very low immigration (the only foreigners you see are doctors and nurses in hospitals) and yet UKIP are very active and successful. Unfortunately I have to agree with pp that the vast majority of people have no idea how government works and xenophobia has definitely won.

I am familiar with Ebbw Vale. It is hard to convey quite how bad things are if you haven't been to a place like that. But things are not going to get better for them with Brexit or a large Tory majority. But such is the will of the people.

I think EU funding is not there for the things your council should be doing (rubbish collections) or to patch up the Tories' austerity cuts. They play a long game, trying to diversify the tourism offer while creating jobs (the hated art galleries), regenerating town centres so they go from no-go areas to somewhere where you might want to spend money, doing very targeted training to upskill certain groups that otherwise would be left to rot etc. Of course you've got to go through loopholes, it's bloody public money We all have great ideas - pp have complained that EU funding should be paying for better transport links, and also that such transport links exist (the train to Cardiff and the deserted town upthread).

But hey ho I'm sure the Tories will give us all the money we're getting right now and more, and spend it so so much better

That's not so much a dice roll as playing roulette with a fully loaded gun.

The fact is it doesn't matter what you think, it's been a labour stronghold for years, a lot have lived through Blair years and are probably sick of everything being blamed on the tories whilst parachuting labour candidates into there safe seats and doing nothing.

It could also be that they don't like corbyn and is a simple fact that labour has been in slow decline for over decade and maybe need to look inwards instead of trying to invent bogeymen of everyone who disagrees are "fooled" by the daily mail/sun/Russians

Self reflection is a wonderful characteristic that seems lost on the most ardent labour supporters, which is obviously lacking if this thread is anything to go by

SteamTrains

Let's see if we can get 'lambs voting for easter' going

Not loopholes but hoops! Fat fingers!

Ohtoblazes

That's strange, I'm in North Wales too.

Do you really think immigration is low here.

40% of the staff where I work are Lithuanian.

There are massive numbers of Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian and Hungarian people settled between Colwyn Bay and Chester.

Just because they don't live in your town/village doesn't mean we have low immigration.

Do you live in Gwynedd by any chance?

Hi maiden - I don't want to give my location away. You could say that immigration is high in your area and low in mine.

Good for them. I'm sure they'll be delighted by the results.

it's the same reason that Brexit won.
I think there are far too many comfortably off middle class people in SE commuter belt towns telling working class people in poorer parts of the country that they should be happy about immigration. It's the reason towns like Peterborough had such a huge Leave vote. People don't really want to discuss it in a calm manner though, but rather to score political brownie points by denouncing anyone with concerns about immigration as thick xenophobes.

papayasareyum: Careful of making too many generalistions.
I am not comfortably off (although I am luckier than many)
I don't know what class I am - maybe middle class, I don't know. I do enjoy houmous, if that's one of your requirements?
I don't live in a SE commuter belt (and not all SE commuter belts voted remain)
I think that immigration brings many benefits, as well as drawbacks, and that the issue is not being honestly addressed at the moment. It is too easy for politicians to blame the severe problems faced by many parts of the country on immigration and the EU, rather than owning up to the damage their policies have done. Why are we letting them get away with this?
It would be nice to be able to discuss it in a calm manner, rather than scoring political brownie points by denouncing anyone with concerns about an extreme Brexit as the metropolitan elite.

And calling people stupid for the way they vote is not only counter productive and insuting, but is also ignorant itself.
Calling a decision stupid, however, is not the same as calling the person making said decision stupid.
Clever people often make stupid decisions.

It is interesting though that the further away from actual immigrants people live, the more likely they are to want to get rid of them........

papaya Brexit won in my area / town/ county/ ward despite us having very low immigration and having benefitted from EU funding. We suffer for other reasons - poor skills, poor mental and physical health, rubbish transport links, cuts to public services, generational inequality. UK governments could have done more to sort these problems out but chose not to, instead blaming the EU / forriners.

Whatever shiny new government we get after 8th June, I am not optimistic for Wales.

I'm very optimistic for Wales. Pro Tory, pro UK, anti-EU
We joined the European Community when it was a trade organisation. We didn't sign up to funding dozens of larger but less economically stable countries and their population.

'm very optimistic for Wales. Pro Tory, pro UK, anti-EU

Wales as a whole being any of those things is literally slitting its own throat.

Wales as a whole being any of those things is literally slitting its own throat.

And therein lies the reason that many voters are defecting from Labour to Tory.

Wales (as with other tribal, labour, less affluent strongholds) has been fed these narratives for too long:
Tory = Evil and will punish you narrative for decades .
The EU = good for you (you get handouts from them which sustain you)
Pro UK = silly/stupid because England doesn't care about you

They've been told to listen as 'Mother [labour/remain] knows best' about what's good for them.

They get stuck with complacent MPs that know they're a shoe-in as they wear a red rosette, or get a completely disinterested & disconnected stranger parachuted into the safe seat as part of their 'political career path'.

Now the disenfranchised, disconnected & pissed off electorate in those areas have had enough.
As has been said before - the most ridiculous thing a person can do is keep repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

Labour took people for granted - Scotland told them to bugger off in 2015, will Wales do so in June? Who knows.

Clever people the Welsh! They've had enough of the 'remoaners' and 'tactical' voters trying to keep on ....and on .....and on, trying to block Brexit.... Which is going to happen anyway!!!!!!

Indeed. If the EU won't sell their stuff to us, we'll just make it ourselves and improve our economy, not there's!

That's a hollow laugh.

The problem is that I know it's wrong to call Leave voters silly, or ill informed or anything like that - but they do keep saying silly and ill informed things...........

@Elphame - please could you explain why?

This blog is relevant to several of the issues on this thread, particularly Part 2: Handouts do not produce gratitude

www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit

I live in a staunchly working-class, impoverished ex-mining village in South Yorkshire and work with a bunch of working class, impoverished individuals who are generally the offspring or grand off-spring of ex-miners and steel workers, 80% of whom are old enough to have been working during the 1980s.

To a man and woman, they are seriously considering voting Tory.

If you'd told me this would be the case twenty years ago, I would have laughed in your face. But no.

The times, they are indeed a-changing!

Oh god, this thread is so depressing. People patronising those who live in Wales about their stupid, silly and ill-informed voting intentions are not going to persuade anyone to change their vote.

I live in the valleys, own a business in the valleys and Labour have been in power at a local level and Welsh Assembly level for years. Things are not really well run. The local councils are really terribly corrupt (I don't see that as a Labour thing, more a been in power for too long this). It is hardly surprising they want a change. Objective 1 funding has been wasted in many cases, I have seen this happen with my own eyes.

The point of EU funding is that they share out the wealth in a way national governments can't or won't. London-centric wealth is a huge problem in the UK and the EU made a big difference to that. It's only going to get worse under a strong Tory government too. Good luck to the lot of you.

I am always shocked at how deeply ignorant (not an insult, literal truth) people in the UK are about EU funding and development and how it works, but then it's never reported. In other EU countries, there are actually positive and ACCURATE news stories about EU funding and development. Those are the countries with rising economies, by and large, and the ones with high approval ratings for the EU. I have lived in the UK for 14 years and I can't recall reading a positive EU story outside the Brexit campaign. It has done a huge amount of good in the UK and that will stop after Brexit. That won't be the EU's fault. Your choice, leavers.

The problem is that I know it's wrong to call Leave voters silly, or ill informed or anything like that - but they do keep saying silly and ill informed things...........

It is interesting though that the further away from actual immigrants people live, the more likely they are to want to get rid of them........

It has been fairly clearly established, and I would have thought would be known by most people who have spent much time looking at the referendum voting demographics, that the link is not with the size of the immigrant population in an area but with the rate of immigration and the change in the size of the population.

Fourth, migration matters, but only in areas where the migrant population has grown rapidly. That is, while the overall share of the population in a given area born outside the UK does not have a significant effect on the leave vote, the pace of change in the decade after 2004 does. Increasing the proportion of migrants in the population by 10ppt raises the leave vote by 3.9ppt. All areas that experienced at least a 7 per cent increase in the proportion of migrants over the last decade voted to leave

www.resolutionfoundation.org/media/blog/why-did-we-vote-to-leave-what-an-analysis-of-place-can-tell-us-about-brexit/

Other studies have found the same.

But do carry on sneering about ill-informed leave voters, if you must Bertrand

Turkeys for Christmas

I have never heard of that one but think that is absolutely and marvelously great at describing this shi* situation.