Madam,

We have recently returned from a holiday in Slovenia, a country similar in size to Wales but with a population of around two million compared to some three million here in the principality.

Slovenia is a confident and hospitable nation, comfortable within itself, strongly unified and a proud member of the European Union.

It stands in stark contrast to Britain where the fractured political landscape is further exacerbated by a weak and divided government, whose Brexit negotiators appear completely out of their depth, and who now seem prepared to contemplate the hitherto unthinkable prospect of crashing out of Europe with no deal at all.

We are, of course, all reaping the whirlwind of the divisive referendum where, among the half truths and untruths that were peddled by the Leave Campaign, was the assurance that British citizens would not be poorer as a consequence of leaving the EU.

Well let me tell the Johnsons, the Goves and the Farages of this world that we already are. A little over two years ago the euro was trading at more than €1.30 to the pound. However, as we found on our recent trip, you can just about get parity if you are lucky. But try changing sterling into euros or using an ATM in Europe. The going rate is currently slightly less than €1 to the pound and, at many currency exchanges, our £1 was only worth an eye-watering €0.84!

Couple this catastrophic fall in the value of sterling to other straws in the wind, such as the Trump administration’s decision to impose a punitive tariff on the new Northern Ireland-built Bombardier aircraft (again, we were told that no such tariffs would be applied in trade deals with the USA), and the gloomy outlook for Britain projected by the leading global think-tank, the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), and the dire financial consequences of leaving the EU are staring us in the face.

But we can’t say we weren’t warned about this, because we were. We just didn’t listen.

Yours etc,

Mike Walker, Dan-y-Coed, Aberystwyth.

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