Wel, mae Dai Lloyd wedi dweud wrthym ni am beidio â galaru, ond mae’n rhaid i fi ddweud fy mod yn dal i alaru—rwy’n dal i alaru am yr ardaloedd hynny yng nghefn gwlad, a’n amaethyddiaeth, sydd ddim yn gwybod nawr sut mae eu dyfodol yn edrych.

I’m still in mourning for those people in the poorest communities who would have assumed that that money was coming to them but who now have no idea whether that will be coming. And I’m in mourning more than anything for the country I love where I have seen division rear its head and we have seen the ugly head of intolerance within our communities. Promises were made and promises have been broken. I think that we have to be very careful also and we need to listen. We need to listen to the people of Wales who sent us a message. They sent us a message, and part of that message was that they want to take back control.

We now live in a country where the Bitcoin is more stable than sterling. We live in a country where we may see the living wage cut by 40p an hour due to the impact of Brexit. We’ve seen housing and banking shares being slashed, and we’ve gone from being the fifth biggest economy in the world to the sixth biggest economy, and we’ve lost our AAA status. But these are just the teething pains of Brexit; there are issues we haven’t even begun to address. How may extra skilled legislators will we need, even in Wales, to disentangle all those statutory instruments that are inbuilt into the complexities of our own legislature? How easy will it be for people from Ireland to land on our shores at Fishguard, Holyhead and Pembroke Dock? How easy will it be for them?

I think the First Minister is doing exactly the right thing: making it clear that what we want is tariff-free access to the single market, without any other technical barriers either in place. I think it’s important and it was a really good signal that he went to the United States to really demonstrate that we are still an outward-looking nation. But it strikes me that the most powerful way of selling our country is actually to ask the people who are already doing business here to act as ambassadors on our behalf, because the experience I have and the experience I’ve seen is that civil servants can go so far and, dare I say it, politicians can only go so far. The real experts are people who are doing business here, and there’s no reason we can’t ask them to be ambassadors on our behalf. It happens in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, there’s no reason why we can’t ask people to do that here.

The other thing we have to make clear is that we can’t accept a country where we would be worse off as a part of the United Kingdom compared to having stayed in the European Union. What kind of signal is that sending to us, the people who want to remain part of the United Kingdom? It’s not just about structural funds, it’s about agriculture and rural payments, it’s about money for our universities, it’s about the enforcement of rules on environmental standards and standards for consumers. We’ve heard today the Institute for Fiscal Studies have estimated that over £500 million of money could be lost from Wales as a result of this. We must not put up with that. We must absolutely fight every step of the way. And we know that even if we weren’t to qualify for the next stage of European structural funds, there would have been some kind of tapering mechanism. We want that money as well. We want that money as well and they need to hear that loudly and clearly in the Treasury.

But, I’m afraid, I really believe that this vote is potentially a crisis for Wales. I don’t know if it is yet. We won’t know until we know the outcome of those negotiations. But I do think that we need to listen to what the Welsh people were telling us, and I think they were telling us a message about the impact of globalisation on their lives. I think that they were telling us that they want a degree more control of their lives and I think we need to work out how we empower those people who wanted to take back control, to genuinely offer them opportunities to take control in their communities over their own lives. We will see in Wales, like elsewhere, a huge increase in the number of people who are self-employed. What do they need? How can we support them within those communities? Yes, we do need to think about an economic strategy and an industrial strategy. Let’s look at places like France. How is their productivity so much better than it is in the UK? There are excellent models for us to follow in some of those countries. And I’ve got to tell you that during my time in industry it was very clear to me that, you’re right, people are not driven to invest in Wales because of grants. That is not what brings them here. What people want is a stable, regulatory and economic environment. I’m afraid that’s the one thing we don’t have at the moment. That’s part of the problem we are up against. So, this economic strategy does have to take into account the fact that that is a difficulty for us at the moment.

We also have to think about the jobs of the future. Week by week, month by month, year by year, technology will be getting rid of and making jobs redundant in these countries. Let’s try and look ahead to what those jobs will look like. I’ve got to end by saying that part of me is still angry and part of me is still sad and mourns for that future where my children will not be a part of the European Union.