Madam,

I read with interest the ‘Comment’ column by Patrick O’Brien, headlined ‘The Majority in Wales wanted to stay in the EU’ and the first thing that came to mind was the old saying “don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story”.

Patrick calculates his figures for the MEP elections in Wales based on The Brexit Party and UKIP voters wanting to leave the EU, which is probably reasonable, but then Change UK, The Green Party, The Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru wanting to remain in the EU, which I suggest isn’t strictly true, because those parties, as he points out, advocate for a second referendum, (not necessarily remain) subtly different I suggest, as some voters may well like to have a second referendum to reinforce the first perhaps!

However even if you assume all these voters do wish to remain, he then chooses to ignore another 20 per cent of the voters of Wales who voted either Conservative or Labour and I would suggest in the current climate it would be impossible to know what these voters wanted, so how can he say ‘The majority of Wales wanted to stay in the EU’? He has not got the evidence to support that claim and I suggest it is this style of rhetoric which has created the situation we are in at present!

The idea of having another referendum on whether we stay or remain in the EU, I believe,is far from simple and could even create more problems that it would solve! Firstly there would have to be a further Act of Parliament and there is no guarantee it would be passed as a lot of MPs may not support such a bill as it could be seen as divisive.

Secondly, what would another referendum ask? Remain, or leave with a deal or leave without a deal, or renegotiate another deal? It is perhaps also interesting to note that, despite all the uncertainty over Brexit, unemployment is now at its lowest level since 1974 and the UK FTSE 100 Stock Market Index reached an all-time high of 7877 in May 2018, so businesses seem to be thriving.

Perhaps we could have referendum on whether we want to have another referendum, or am I being silly now?

Yours etc, Eddie Ffoulkes-Jones, Trefenter, Aberystwyth.

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