If you're Welsh & voted Leave - Why?

[Cjamm]

I posted this in chat but zero responses so thought it'd best to move it here.

I was really surprised by the Welsh vote, Wales has really benefited from being in the European Union e.g

Swansea University's new Bay Campus was only possible because of the £40 Million from the European Structural Funds which came from a finance package of £60 million from the European Investment Bank.

The National Waterfront Museum, which includes a gallery, exhibition and library, benefited from £3.7m of EU funds when it was constructed.

5.8m of EU funds was made available for Quadrant Intermodal Transport Centre, led by the City & County of Swansea, which replaced the outdated and rundown bus station.

£9.6m EU funds were invested as part of Neath Port Talbot Regeneration project which included schemes to help make improvements in and around the town centres as well as a purpose built Community Enterprise Centre.

1. When you voted did you not care/consider about the financial benefits Wales receives from the EU?

1. Do you think Westminister (that only cares about London/SE) will honestly make up the funds instead?

1. Was it really immigration and if so why? Was it fear of job loss/overcrowding or was it the refugee issue on the mainland. Do you really believe immigration can be capped/slowed down just because we're leaving the EU?

1. The EU army is not a legitimate answer, it doesn't exist & it never will!

1. Are you worried at all? This doesn't mean you regret your choice but are you worried about the economy or the possible breakup of Great Britian? Did you expect that Scotland/N.Ireland might leave because of the vote?

I only know of one Welsh Leave voter who isn't of the 'send them back / I didn't know what I was voting for / damn furringers taking our jobs' variety.

The reasons given were:
The current arrangements are not what were originally signed up for. The political union shouldn't be happening -it was meant to be an economic union. Changes have been made in a non transparent way. This is unaccepable.

He agrees that the Brexit means economic instability, the possibility of the rise of right wing and xenophobic idiots ( politicians included), he loathes Farage and Boris. He believes that Project Fear is scaremongering and it won't be that bad. He is STUNNED at the referendum result.

I'm Welsh. I voted remain. I'm ashamed of my County and my Country. We should be nominated for a Darwin Award.

I do understand the reasons he has given unusual but I don't understand how he thinks they are worth the horrific fall out for Wales and the rest of the UK. He clearly didn't think leave would win!

I started a thread with this buts it's probably better placed here
www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/
I have really struggled to understand why regions like Wales and Cornwall have voted leave. This piece has some very good answers

Thewolf, that's a really good piece.

I think they missed an important point off the very end though: after discussing how we were the 'least shackled', and comparing that to the almost dictatorship that other members have experienced, it would have been worth pointing out that that was what many feared we would be led/forced towards with the current mindset of ever closer political union that Juncker favours.
We didn't want to become that enslaved.

That article should be read by every single poster who keeps throwing what is possibly one of the most grating and patronising phrases on MN at the moment:
Turkeys voting for Christmas.
If people cannot understand it, then it is because for all their 'left leaning, socialist' proclamations, they were the very people who didn't acknowledge or try to understand the very real experiences of the disenfranchised.

Several posters tried to explain this phenomena on many threads in the run up to the referendum and were shut down by louder 'fact' spouting 'educated' posters.
Dismissed, minimised and written off as too stupid to understand, exactly as the politicians have been doing for 20+ years.

If you keep pushing people down, they will eventually push back.
And they did.

I'm Welsh , under 50, NHS professional, graduate level education, in a mixed race relationship and I voted out and stand by my vote, as did my non EU partner. No regrets here. I read widely around the subject and made my decision.
I am certainly no racist ..and I cant believe the stupidity and arrogance of the moaning loosers to keep labelling anyone with a different view to theirs as such. I believe in immigration and diversity in our population, however I also believe in a level of control to protect the resources of our small island that we in Wales are just a small part of. I consider myself British first and Welsh second. I don't support devolution and I'm very happy that Wales voted leave as a majority. I live in rural area, my three nearest neighbours are working dairy farmer families and all voted leave as well. They are not racisits either. EU funding has done nothing of value in my area, despite millions being spent on parks, coastal projects and of course the waterfront museum in Swansea. The EU will not step in and protect our steel industy. My partner has worked on one of these over complicated and pointless EU funded community projects and I know from his experience what a waste of time and resources it was, with no long term benefits for the population.
I believe the EU is a damaged , bloated, unaccountable, undemocratic , outdated, money ingesting, failing project and we will be better off out and taking control of our own destiny.

It was the added comments to the Sharia Law that I object to. Blatantly racist, posting things from groups like 'mums against muslim indoctrination', the UKIPers amongst them (including FIL who has refused to speak to DS since he came out as gay 2 years ago), telling me I have let down all those who fought for our freedom (I wear my Dads medals that he earned in WW2 on Armistice Day, he fought for freedom, not racism and xenophobia).

Just shocked at the real feelings of people I considered friends and family. This vote seems to have made the racists feel safe in voicing their comments and I don't want any part in that.

Mangomoon I completely agree with you, I have been a very angry poster over the past few days - I simply could not understand why anyone would vote brexit other than for racist reasons and felt that all those crying 'I'm not racist' were simply covering themselves on a respectable forum.
I am still very concerned that Brexit normalises and legitimises racism but I can see there is more to it.

Wolf, I was a firm Leave voter in the run up and on the day.

I have been increasingly disgruntled with the EU since Tony Blair decided to go for immediate uncontrolled immigration way back when the former eastern bloc countries joined, even though France & Germany chose to stagger theirs.

These countries' national average wage was less than half of our national average wage.
He did this whilst at the same time ensuring that the working classes were caught firmly in a benefits trap.

This created a perfect storm:
Why would you work a shitty job when you would be worse off for your trouble?
A willing migrant workforce became abundant - they were more than happy to snap up those jobs, why wouldn't they?

15+ years of being pushed down, ignored and denigrated led to what happened last week.

I have followed arguments & points on both sides in the run up, and understood the 'remain' angle but I continued to believe in Brexit - it was a vote for change, away from the control of Brussels & away from a behemoth that contained too much economic & political diversity within its member countries for one size to fit all.

David Cameron was essentially flipped the bird by the EU when he tried to negotiate and that was the point that I was utterly convinced that we could change nothing from within; Britain simply didn't matter enough to them to even try and give us concessions.

It was a leap of faith, but one that people were prepared to make because they had nothing more to lose.

I have a lot of hope and belief in this country, but it will only bear fruit if we all pull together and stop scrapping - especially the politicians.

Sorry for my really long ramble!
I hope that helps to explain how one leaver made up their mind.

Mango, thank you. I voted remain. I am an immigrant - I am white, and speak English with only a very faint accent, I have a profession and am quite well paid, I say all this because I have had plenty of people say that I don't really count as an immigrant but, trust me, I have never felt like I actually belong here. Brexit has only made me feel far less welcome. I have really struggled with this recently as I feel that on the whole I give far more to this country than I take out. I haven't really considered the lack of control perspective and have been guilty of thinking its a bit whining tbh. I think I'm slowly starting to get it.

If you're a professional that has moved here for your work then there's no reason why you would have noticed at all tbh - nothing wrong with that in the least.

It's quite telling though that you are 'trying to get it' and are trying to understand and you yourself are an immigrant - people actually from here can't be arsed and haven't been arsed to even try to bother, all quite happy in their ivory towers.

(By the way, I hate the way it sounds saying 'immigrant', it sounds dismissive somehow, but I don't know what other word sounds better if you know what I mean).

I hope that you're not adversely affected by the way the vote went btw, and if you are I hope it's minimal, I don't wish difficulty on anyone.

I'm welsh and astonished and ashamed. This is not who I thought we were. I didnt think we were stupid. Theres is nothing here. No jobs no industry. Dh works in England and commutes. The leave voters I saw on my fb were due to immigration and actually shared daily mail headlines. They have no clue how badly they will be affected and I don't want to stuck around in Wales to see this pan out if I can

Oh, and I meant to add that that's truly shit if you've not felt properly at home here or welcome, that's horrible

Another side to this is that my sil is from a non EU country. The state are making her jump through hoops to stay here (she is a lovely woman, would be an asset to our country and all she wants is to live in peace with her husband). If she was married to an EU citizen she could come here automatically but in being married to a brit she cannot. Something is wrong here. The whole question of immigration is managed needs addressing.
It's really not as simple as leave = racist.

I'm Welsh and on the border between a remain area and a leave area . My village falls just into the leave. I am baffled too. We would be in a much stronger position now if we were remainers. As it stands we will be ignored as usual by Westminster. If Wales, Scotland and Ireland were all "remain" and England "leave" then we would have a strong bargaining tool .
I know the valleys well, and I think that they have been conned by the tabloid press and the fear mongering. It is tragic that the poorer areas of Wales, those most benefiting from remaining, are those that voted out. This campaign has been a total bloody mess.

Mango, I sort of get it or atleast I'm trying to, I don't agree with Brexit at all, the EU has done so much for me personally & I think we've really gambled on our futures, but I have to accept that it hasn't had the same meaningful impact on others & that the Vote is now Leave.

I don't think we'll be the only country to go through this, the French/Greeks are now wanting a referendum, so their might not even be an EU in 10 years time, which really saddens me but it might just mean we manage to keep the Scots / N.Ireland .

I honestly think their wouldn't be so much mass hysteria & uncertainty if we had a decent enough Leader, the way Boris/Gove are acting just terrifies me, do they not have a plan? Are they scared as well? Now there's an MP calling for the ref to be ignored, which I don't agree with, it was a democratic process & should be accepted. The lib Dems however are running on a platform to stay in the EU, which I believe to be the democratic way to change this decision.

My fear is that Boris was gambling on a remain vote winning, so he could do all this posturing and further his own ambitions within the party, but didn't count on actually having to deliver.

HopeArden, Boris has absolutely no idea what to do, it's obvious he never really wanted to Leave but was trying to further his own career. I really hope he doesn't win the Conservative party leader vote, If we're to leave I want someone who'll fight tooth & nail to get us the best deal possible, someone who 100% believes in Brexit & will put the UK first, someone who can reassure me that this isn't the beginning of years of hardship but a change that we can handle. That man is not Boris or Gove or Theresa May and that really worries me

Agreed.

Thank you everyone for explaining your stances and in particular for that piece wolf. It is so incredibly sad that people from deprived areas don't actually believe in a better future but who can blame them :(

I understand the leave stance better now although I still cannot agree with it. I continue to be very concerned at the lack of plan. My MP emailed back and basically said there isn't one. With the PM resigning, the Tory party split and Labour falling apart at the seams there is a power vacuum and my fear is that it will be filled by the far right.

I have been thinking of whether to go but I think perhaps we all need to focus instead on working together to steady the ship and end the insults being thrown from both sides. Leave aren't all racists (although some are) and remain aren't all smug rich people looking down on the more deprived (although some are).

I hope with all my heart that I am wrong that this is not the right decision for the UK and Wales. I so very badly want to be proven wrong and see our communities thrive.

There is more to Leave voters then racism, of course there is. And I think the rhetoric of 'a Brexit vote is a racist vote' damaged the Remain campaign massively as it overrode discussion re people's other concerns. For example TTIP. If this had been properly and openly discussed people could have seen that this wasn't a threat to the NHS as the proposed European deal with US has a clause protecting government provided health services and clearly stating that these services would be exempt from TTIP. Whilst BJ and NF have indicated they are in favour of privatising the NHS.
If this had been more openly discussed rather then shutting down conversation and debate with cries of racism we may not be in this position.
The Remain campaign has a lot to answer for in my opinion and this really shows how far removed they are from a large swathe of the population that they don't even know how to engage with them appropriately.

Very true how and I know that I must bear some responsibility for the lack of understanding. What my FB newsfeed has shown me over the last few weeks is that everyone I am 'friends' with come from the same background as me. Social stratification is very real in my life.

Cameron also has to take responsibility for getting Obama over here to threaten us. It didn't affect my vote but it did piss me off and shows massive lack of understanding of the mood of the people.

MangMoon thank you for all of your posts on the Referendum. I'm finding it difficult to continually fight against all of the 'leave voters are racist thickos' (especially one fingered tying in a small screen since my laptop died). Your answers are far more eloquent than mine.

Yours too hownotto.

In some ways I don't blame 'Remainers' for thinking 'Leavers' are 'Racist thickos' - Farage, transparent Johnson & the continual clips of actual racist thickos wanting to 'get 'em all out' and the Remain Leaders shutting down any actual debate.

I wish we had had better Leaders on both sides, I'm sure there'd be less hostility now.

I voted Leave (obviously), I still believe it's the right decision, but I made it for many reasons other than immigration - mainly how the EU is run.. I wish we could get this message across, ESPECIALLY to the many 'immigrants' (who I simply think of as people funnily enough) who have moved here, got jobs, built their lives here and are as much a part of the 'us' I believe will be better off on 'our' own than as a part of the failure that is the EU as those of us born here. You ARE a part of the WE that we believe will be better off out of the EU.

Thanks Extra .

I literally have nothing better to do than sit on MN at the mo!

I completely agree with everything you just said too - especially the last paragraph about it being about us all, the bigger 'we' that includes everyone that lives here from all over Europe & the world.

carefusion
Yes I totally understand your frustration with the EU. I also totally accept that if you say the projects didn't do much for long term benefit, it must be true. What I really don't get is this : how is the EU responsible for the lack of development in your area? Was it EU that stopped successive UK governments to try and develop your area? Can you please answer it too?
If you cannot answer this, I am terribly sad that you have acted like that angry child who breaks the toy other child is playing with to show their parents.