Two posts in two days? What is going on but this post isn’t planned at all. As I am sure most of you know by now yesterday the UK had a referendum to decide if we should leave the EU or not.
For me it was an easy decision. I had decided straight away to vote remain. (why I decided this will be explained later)
The run up to this referendum has been horrible to be honest, TV debates full of childish comments, racist propaganda, lies and even a tragic death (some say the death of Jo Cox has nothing to do with this referendum)
As this is a yes/ no referendum rather than a traditional election it is much harder to predict and it has been splitting politically parties with members of every party (left wing right) fighting for both leave EU and remain in the EU. You know it’s trouble when parties are in divide themselves.
Anyway as the results came in it just got worse and worse until I woke up this morning to find out that leave had one the referendum.
The results 52% to leave and 48% to remain.
It’s so close yet those 48% barely matter, leave won so we are out of the EU.
This news has made me disappointed, scared for our future, angry to say the least but I am also just shocked at how people sill think this was a good idea.
Wales my home, shocked me the most. Only 5/22 Welsh constituencies voted to remain. I can’t understand how anyone in Wales thought it was a good idea. The majority of Wales (RCT, Caerphilly etc) are some of the UK’s poorest areas than get the most funding from the EU. Wales compared to England actually receive more money from the EU than we put in, the Welsh government receives 1078 euros per person from the EU which is amazing. There are endless examples of areas that have benefited from EU funding such as science research and town developments in the ‘deprived’ old mining towns.
Immigration has been the main topic of discussion surrounding this referendum (notably from UKIP) and I had hoped people wouldn’t let racism and xenophobia cloud their judgement (personally I encourage migration, the easier travel and learning from other cultures etc) however Wales has a TINY TINY tiny amount of immigrants. Although the 5 welsh constituencies that did vote remain have roughly 3 times as many immigrants than the rest of Wales.
Now my second home Cornwall would be also be nothing without the EU, as the poorest part of the UK purely funded by the EU even my own university only exists because of the EU and they voted to leave. I have since read an article on ITV News saying how Cornwall voted out but want to keep their funding…that is not how EU funding works, this was another reason I was passionate about remaining because we cannot come back from leaving, we had no real idea what the outcome would be from this decision (only predictions from trust economists and experts obviously).
A lot has happened since the results came out this morning, for a start our currency has already dropped massively this has changed a lot throughout the day but I know we are no longer the 5th largest economy the bank of England are doing all they can but we don’t really know what it means for our economy in the long run yet.