Brexit deal-makers should heed our poll

OUR poll today showing that 60% of people in Wales now believe that having free access to the European Single Market is more important than cracking down on EU migration has, unsurprisingly, been welcomed by the Welsh Government.

The febrile concentration on immigration that dominated the news agenda in the run-up to last year’s referendum has receded, to be replaced by an increasing realisation that Brexit really does pose a threat to many thousands of jobs in Wales.

There’s little doubt that the political mood has changed, both in Wales and across Britain as a whole.

Less than three months ago, a poll made the almost apocalyptic prediction that the Conservatives could win an overall majority of Welsh seats at the general election. Their hard Brexit stance appeared to have the approval of voters, and there was little doubt that they would secure a landslide and be able to adopt an extreme position in negotiations with the EU.

But Theresa May’s gamble failed to pay off and we are now in a political limbo where the breezy assertions of the Prime Minister and her ministers no longer seem so convincing.

It follows as a matter of course that when those putting a particular view across are weakened, their adversaries have the opportunity to come into their own.

First Minister Carwyn Jones has, since the referendum, consistently banged the drum for a soft Brexit, with “unfettered access” to the Single Market. As he puts it, it is an essential requirement for Wales’ future prosperity.

Some in Wales will have been listening to him, but others will have picked up on concerns about the impact of hard Brexit expressed by business leaders, trade unionists and the likes of Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator. Such concerns cross over into the educational field, where Dr Hywel Ceri Jones has spoken with passion about the huge numbers of students who have profited from the Erasmus international programme which he launched 30 years ago.

Ultimately, of course, it is impossible to separate economic benefits from educational and cultural ones, because they are all interlinked. In parallel with the Single Market for goods and services, there is effectively a single market for knowledge, which relies on the unfettered exchange of ideas between academics and others with knowledge to impart.

At present the UK is having to wait for trade talks to begin until the three initial items on the EU’s agenda have been resolved satisfactorily – the so-called divorce bill, the future rights of EU citizens in the UK and the nature of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

Reaching an agreement in these three areas will not be easy, but what comes next will be more difficult, especially if the UK’s negotiators remain inflexible.

However much the Brexiteers may claim otherwise, the majority don’t want a hard Brexit. The UK’s negotiators should take heed of our poll and modify their standpoint accordingly. The Western Mail newspaper is published by Media Wales a subsidiary company of Trinity Mirror PLC, which is a member of IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The entire contents of The Western Mail are the copyright of Media Wales Ltd. It is an offence to copy any of its contents in any way without the company’s permission. If you require a licence to copy parts of it in any way or form, write to the Head of Finance at Six Park Street. The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2014 was 78.5%