Leaving EU will make us poorer

THE report that the government is offering northern coal mining constituencies extra funding for support of May’s Brexit deal is surely a new low.

Even lower than the s supply and confidence b bribe with the DUP.

This is pork barrel politics and does not bode well for the future. The “Shared Prosperity Fund”, designed to reduce inequality in the UK after Brexit, has been described as a branch of the English Local Government Association. EU regional development funding was at least based on objective measurable criteria out of which Wales, unfortunately because of its relative p poverty, did rather well.

The tragedy of Wales v voting leave is that e economically the EU was n never the problem.This lay with the quality of domestic economic policy formulation at the regional level, and macroeconomic policy at the national level.

In future the real danger is that Wales, always outshouted by Scotland and ignored in Westminster, will get very little out of the fund. Those advocating Britain becoming a great independent trading nation are really talking total economic nonsense. Rather ironic that as I write this the EU/Japan trade deal comes into force. How long will it take the UK to replicate this? Can it be replicated? Don’t hold your breath. Leaving the EU will make Wales poorer. It won’t be marginal. Dr Robert Morgan Efail Isaf, Pontypridd