Farage is right: Wales is an utter disaster

Adam Smith’s dictum – that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation – is being tested to the limit in 21st century Wales. After 25 years of Labour control, it lags behind the rest of the UK on a range of metrics. Nigel Farage is wise to launch his “contract” with the people in Merthyr Tydfil, if his aim is to warn the British public just how much they might suffer under Keir Starmer.

The Welsh economy has shrunk by 1pc since 2018, while England’s has grown by 2pc. Its productivity rate is lower than in most other regions, and its schools produce among the worst results in the UK. A third of children in Wales are classed as living in poverty.

Then there’s the pandemic response, the anti-car policies, the anti-business, anti-agriculture and anti-tourism agenda. Farmers have protested against a government they feel has turned its back on the countryside, specifically a sustainable farming scheme that would require them to sacrifice 10pc of agricultural land to be used for trees and 10pc for wildlife habitat.

A tourist tax could be imposed as soon as 2027 on overnight visitors, who will find themselves clobbered in the name of “fairness”. This should be a golden period for the Welsh tourism industry, as the era of cheap air travel nears its end and heatwaves deter many Brits from holidaying in the Med. Yet anti-foreigner sentiment is driving it into the ground.

All but three Welsh councils, out of 22, have introduced tax premiums on second or empty homes. It was reported in May that Labour are now planning to deploy satellites to spy on homeowners to verify the size of houses, with those living in areas with good schools or lower crime rates likely to be “punished” under a new council tax regime.

But against this stiff competition, it is the way that Welsh Labour has trapped its citizens in a cycle of dependency and welfare which is most disgraceful. An under-reported statistic this week came from the Office for National Statistics’ labour market report, which revealed the economic inactivity rate in Wales is worse than in any other region of the UK.

Figures from the ONS suggest that 28.4pc of 16-64 year olds in Wales were economically inactive in the three months to April, compared to a UK average of 22.3pc. According to the latest data, 160,000 people are long-term sick, the most in 17 years accounting for 34pc of all economic inactivity.

Is anyone surprised? In addition to driving its economy to the brink, the devolved Labour administration has slowly and deliberately destroyed the culture of work. It has promoted four-day weeks, only to then decree that they might be racist because they “discriminate” against ethnic minority groups working in frontline public sector roles.

It trialled a Universal Basic Income scheme, paying £1,600 each to a group of 635 care leavers, only to concede it cannot be continued after the initial pilot ends in 2025 due to cost.

No wonder seven local authority areas saw falls in population in 2021 compared with 2011. What hope is there for the hard-working and aspirational in a country which has, at government level, given up on growth and prosperity?

Across the UK, talent and capital flight is becoming a clear and present danger – there was a surge in the number of wealthy people leaving last year.

Investment migration consultant Henley & Partners estimated that the UK last year experienced the third-largest exodus of millionaires in the world, with more than 3,000 moving to places where they can keep more of their hard-earned cash – instead of watching it be wasted by the state.

It is true that Wales’s predicament is a hangover from the decline of heavy industry in the 1970s and 80s, compounded by a lack of skills and infrastructure. But the show-boating, virtue-signalling and litany of government failures has entrenched this sorry situation.

Only under Plaid Cymru, which in its manifesto has proposed accelerating towards Net Zero by 2035 and rejoining the single market, could matters conceivably deteriorate further.

In 2022, Starmer said that the Welsh Government provided a “blueprint for what Labour can do across the UK”. What’s happened in Wales may be the future of the whole UK just weeks from now.