Llyr Williams, Sir Benfro branch chair, writes in response to the Conservative conference this week.
It’s conference season again and our papers and social media feeds are full of coverage from the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.
This week I felt sick to my stomach reading the divisive message coming from the Conservative Party Conference. It’s real ‘us vs. them’ speak with immigration talk making all the headlines.
Masked behind the good news of 1,500 extra doctor recruitment places, is his wish, in a time of a world wide doctor shortage, to limit the number of doctors from abroad that come here to work in our hospitals and wanting the NHS to become ‘self sufficient’ as he calls it by 2025. Do our hospitals not need expertise the world over to ensure the best level of care is administered and our medical students have the best training possible?
Wednesday morning’s headlines made me feel even worse.
Amber Rudd has set out plans to force businesses to reveal how many foreign staff members they employ in a form of naming and shaming exercise for those companies who do not take on ‘British workers’. She also wants to make it harder for companies to recruit foreign workers. Meaning that, for example, our refineries on the haven, will find it difficult to hire expert engineers from abroad. Does that not make it less lucrative for the companies to invest there?
The core message coming out of the Conservative party conference is one of shutting us off from the world. We shouldn’t get angry at immigration - not when the UK government uses immigration as a scapegoat to distract us from their failings.
Services in our communities are being cut to the bone, our voting system means the majority of the country didn’t get the MP or the government they voted for, and the number using foodbanks is rising. Poverty is a real problem which is being completely ignored by those in charge and it’s getting worse. Let’s get angry at that! Let’s look after our communities no matter who lives in them or where they’re from.
Theresa May has also used conference to call out ‘divisive nationalists’. The term nationalist is frequently used against me but I would never discriminate based on nationality. People will always be people - no matter who we are or where we’re from.
We are all people. Cut us in half and we’re all red inside. Let’s open Wales (and the UK) to the world after Brexit not shut it off and brick us in.
