In 2015, Nigel Farage visited Swansea, Wales, in the run-up to the referendum on European Union membership. He made several claims during his visit, stating that Wales was receiving a “rotten deal” from the EU, alleging its membership was causing severe damage to the Welsh steel industry and that small businesses were at risk of collapse. He claimed that the UK had ceded control of fishing, industry, farming, and business to the EU, but provided no evidence to support these claims.
Fast forward four years. By this time, the UK had voted to leave the EU, and Mr Farage was back in Wales once more, this time in Merthyr Tydfil, campaigning for a UKIP victory in the European elections. When questioned by a BBC reporter about the benefits to Wales of leaving the EU, by then referred to as “Brexit”, Mr Farage was unable to answer. When questioned about the money Wales received from the EU, specifically £250 million a year, Mr Farage simply responded that “we” have given away hundreds of billions over the last few decades.
When pressed further on how Wales would benefit from Brexit, Mr Farage stated that the UK would be in charge of its steel industry, even though it was forty miles away from where he currently was, and couldn’t provide any real benefits for the Merthyr Tydfil agricultural industry.
Despite Mr Farage’s claims of unfairness on the part of Wales’ membership, EU Structural Funds have greatly benefited the country. Refurbishment and redevelopment projects throughout Merthyr Tydfil Town Centre, amounting to £7.15 million, saw the installation of St Tydfil’s Bridge, providing a link between the College area and the town centre, along with the creation of a new arts centre.
In East Wales alone, £3.1 billion was invested through EU funding, supporting the creation of small businesses, renewable energy projects, research and innovation, and urban development. Through the Rural Development Programme, the EU invested over £846 million in farming businesses and sustainable land management, with more than £409 million allocated explicitly for farmers.
In South Wales, the story is all too similar. Port Talbot saw regeneration projects, funded by the EU, through the creation of the Harbour Way M4 link road, which involved an investment of £54 million, as well as a new engineering research centre, with an investment of £7.5 million, and a new transport hub for the town centre, with an investment of £2.5 million. Swansea University also saw its fair share of investment, with the European Investment Bank providing £60 million to enhance both Singleton and Bay campuses.
Meanwhile, in North and Mid Wales, respectively, EU investments of £1 million in Powys Council led to the creation of the Cynnydd Project, a joint partnership between the Council and Careers Wales to better support young people aged 11-16, while a £1.5 million EU investment in Conwy County Borough Council saw the creation of a new enterprise park, that was expected to create up to 150 new jobs for the region.
With so much funding given to Wales by the EU, one must wonder how Mr Farage was able to make his claims of a “rotten deal” with a straight face. Throughout the run-up to the Brexit vote, Mr Farage talked about “taking back control” and, during his speech at the 2024 Sovereignty Summit, claimed that he had won the battle for Britain’s sovereignty against “globalist institutions” like the EU.
And now, nearly a decade on from the promises and the slogans, the steel industry still struggles, farming is no more secure, and the billions once flowing into Welsh communities have slowed to a trickle. While the EU funded roads, campuses, youth projects, and innovation, Mr Farage offered only slogans about control, with no answers when pressed. You can’t fund schools with rhetoric. You can’t rebuild communities with ideology. And you certainly can’t pay the bills with control. You can’t spend sovereignty, Mr Farage, but you did spend Wales’ future chasing it.
* Jack Meredith is a Welsh Liberal Democrat member. He is the spokesperson for Centre Think Tank on Social Security.
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22 Comments
Ultimately, it’s recycled taxpayers money. The Welsh voted to leave – in some districts by a very high margin. As with England many voters couldn’t see or feel the benefits of membership. Reform in all likelihood will do well in Wales next year. Voters have moved on from the eu – it’ll be far better fighting for what’s relevant today not ten years ago.
In response to Greg Hyde:
My piece is a simple clarification of the facts. The party at large, for the most part, has moved on from making Brexit the crux of their arguments. This is just some academic pondering on my part 🙂
Thank you for your comment; nonetheless! I enjoy the discussions held on this site. They provide me with a great insight into the minds of other members and demonstrate how broad a church we are as a party!
I agree with Greg we need to concentrate on today’s issues, but one point comes out of Jack’s Oped. Farage and Reform UK speak with simplicity; by saying we have given away billions when asked about money from the EU to Wales, most people get the point that this money is our money anyway that we have paid into the EU and so they assume Wales are not benefitting overall, even though the truth may be otherwise when balancing all the information about payments and trade. Simplicity, avoiding the whole truth, is the game Farage plays and he plays it explicitly. Just recently he has told his activists to keep messages simple and with so many people that works. We must try to counter his messages with simple messages too, though we usually need to back it up with just one or two simple facts.
In response to Nigel Jones:
I completely agree with you, particularly regarding the importance of using straightforward messaging.
We live in a time when people either lack the time or the desire to process large amounts of information, especially when Farage can convey anything he wants in minimal words, gaining consensus easily.
We must discover a method to distil the facts into soundbites without sacrificing the truth.
This, however, is easier said than done.
@ Greg Hyde, “The Welsh voted to leave – in some districts by a very high margin.”.
Oh, no, they didn’t, Mr. Hyde…….. are you familiar with the following ?
“English people living in Wales tilted it towards Brexit, …” The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com › uk-news ›
22 Sept 2019 — The question of why Wales voted to leave the EU can in large part be answered by the number of English retired people who have moved across the border, …
David; Voting was determined by you’re postcode not you’re DNA ..
Wales was a net beneficiary of EU funding while England was a net contributor. The Labour Welsh Government produced a detailed breakdown of European Structural Funds expenditure in Wales until it was finally wound up in 2023. https://www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2023-12/eu-structural-funds-in-wales-2000-to-2023.pdf
In 2021, Lord Michael German asked how these funds amounting to £400 million per year were going to be continued to be spent in Wales . https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/brexit-replacing-eu-funding-in-wales/
Far from this expenditure being maintained fiendish new ways have been found to cut the Welsh budget. Not only has HS2 been classified as an England and Wales project despite stopping in Birmingham so has the Oxford to Cambridge rail line. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czxyr75gk1vo
Modelling economic counterfactuals is always going to be subject to uncertainties and disputes. But all credible, independent analysis has shown Brexit has cost the Treasury far more than the EU membership fee. So the investment EU made in Wales was not “recycled taxpayers money” – it was a bonus from being a leader in the largest market in the world and it is not going to be replaced.
@Greg Hyde
Nobody denied Wales voted for Brexit. But it’s probably false to say the Welsh voted for Brexit. I live in Scotland but I was born in England. I don’t consider myself Scottish and I don’t imagine English people retiring to Wales consider themselves to be Welsh.
The Guardian 22 September, 2019,
“Work by Danny Dorling, a professor of geography at Oxford, found that the result could in part be attributed to the influence of English voters. If you look at the more genuinely Welsh areas, especially the Welsh-speaking ones, they did not want to leave the EU,” Dorling told the Sunday Times. “Wales was made to look like a Brexit-supporting nation by its English settlers.”
Sorry, Gregory, but, to quote Wittgenstein, ‘a thing is what it is and nothing else’. no matter what post code (introduced 1959) it may abide in now.
@Greg. First of all, ‘The Welsh voted to leave’… 47.5% of us voted Remain, thank you. (That’s actually a bigger percentage than in England).
A lot of people in Wales voted to leave because they felt left behind and let down over decades by mainstream politicians and wanted to send the Westminster government a message. Others thought our steel industry would fare better outside the EU. Plus that good egg Boris and that nice Mr Farage were telling them how much better off they’d be with all the extra money that could be spent here.
Have voters ‘moved on from the EU’? Nine years after that vote, their everyday lives haven’t much changed and for sure haven’t improved. The steel industry has fared badly. And that extra money has never arrived.
‘Today’s issues’ are no different from 2016’s issues.
Sadly, for some reason, many people don’t seem to have noticed that the nice Mr Farage who is still claiming to be different from mainstream politicians and is promising to make their lives better is the same bloke whose promises in 2016 amounted to nothing.
‘Have voters ‘moved on from the EU’? Nine years after that vote, their everyday lives haven’t much changed and for sure haven’t improved’…..Cassie , that just goes to show that membership didn’t make much difference in a lot of people’s lives. The Status quo is never a good sell. The EU was never as popular as many on here like to think, very poor election turnouts were indicative of that, the only time the British voters really engaged was when given a chance to leave.
Talk of EU membership in next years election will be utterly pointless.
@Greg
The promise by Brexiters was that, once freed of the “shackles of the EU”, Britain would surge ahead, so – by its own standards – Brexit is an absolute flop.
Moreover it is an expensive flop, since as Andrew M pointed out, “Brexit has cost the Treasury far more than the EU membership fee”.
And, the turnout in the European elections is indicative of the poor campaigns run by the big two parties, who both basically campaigned on “We really don’t like being in the EU but vote for us anyway”. Proof of that was seen in a by-election held roughly a week after the 2014 European elections where the number of Conservative voters quadrupled from one week to the next, meaning they went from a distant second to UKIP to trouncing them the next.
Paul; Could of would of should of, won’t make much headway on the doorstep next year.
UK ain’t going back anytime soon – if at all. The UK average turnouts were low to mid 30% with the lowest at just over 25% being the third lowest of all time – Slovakia holding the bottom two positions on 16%. It just wasn’t as popular as you guys like to think. Many communities rightly felt, it just didn’t make any real difference in their lives, hence the apathy.
Jack isn’t re-running the Brexit vote, he’s making some very good points about the danger of Farage and populism. Travelling in Wales a few years ago I was struck by the number of signs on buildings proclaiming ‘this was built with EU funding’. Similar kinds of signs are dotted around the West Bank, usually with Norway or Saudi Arabia as the benefactor. No doubt that was heart warming for the Palestinians, but the people of Wales would have felt the opposite – the subliminal message being that they had to rely on charity, and charity from arrogant foreigners like the Germans. Populism is based on amplifying feelings, and has nothing to do with facts. Jack is right to warn that this problem hasn’t gone away, and neither has Farage.
Jack Meredith, Nigel Farage doesn’t do facts; he sells magic beans to a gullible population.
Farage did it with UKIP (the absence of the promised benefits were because ‘it wasn’t done right’)..A sad fact is that the ‘once conned’ are the easiest to con again
Reform is sold as a winning ‘lottery ticket’ to a better life; migrants will be sent away, boats will be stopped, everyone will pay less tax and services will improve, etc., etc… Don’t ask “HOW?”, just “BELIEVE”.
But it works..
In response to @Andy Daer
Isn’t it interesting? The university where I studied and now work has received quite a bit of funding from the EU! Even now, we’re involved in some exciting, though limited, joint ventures with the EU, thanks to the new government’s negotiations focused on innovation and research. So, bit by bit, and even if it’s small, the truth is starting to shine through! 🙂
In response to @expats
Yes, I agree. Farage is a modern-day snake oil salesman!
The short Newsnight film where Nick Clegg visited Blaenau Gwent in late 2016 was very instructive. Millions and millions of pounds of Objective 1 funding has been poured into that borough since the year 2000. A common complaint was that the EU money was “spent on the wrong things” – something I would disagree with, but it’s a powerful sentiment.
I have often thought that Wales would have been 75% Remain if all that EU money (around £7.5 billion over 20 years) had simply been invested into some sort of sovereign wealth fund that paid out a £200 dividend each Christmas.
We have moved heaven and earth to try to shift the economic stats of this area, but many people are still struggling,” said Richard Crook, the head of regeneration for the Blaenau Gwent county council. “And if people don’t feel that over the last 20 years the economy has improved for them, then they’re not going to believe there has been any meaningful investment here.
2016…
The mistake made by the formerly Remain, and now Rejoin, side, is to almost exclusively rely on the pound and pence side of the argument.
This post is no exception. It wasn’t enough in 2016 and it won’t be enough now.
There needs to be some emotional points to back this up. The Leave side had these with their points about sovereignty, who makes our laws, who controls our borders etc. It wasn’t entirely that we’d be financially better off in the EU.
To try to dismiss them by glibly saying “you can’t spend sovereignty” isn’t going to work.
Sorry. Should be ” financially better off out of the EU”.
We are where we are. Wales like the rest of the UK would benefit from rejoining the eu. While Wales might have benefitted from devolution, Wales also depends on England’s prosperity or otherwise for its continued growth.