Brexit and the posibility of a Celtic Federation.

My deepest hope is that somehow we can salvage our UK membership of the EU before it is too late – but that is a faint hope that wants to reverse what has been done. If we are catapulting the UK out of the EU, then it may be time to radically reconfigure the shattered remnants.
It looks almost certain that Scotland will go for independence if Brexit goes through. Ulster will have to reconsider its relationships with both its immediate neighbours – The Republic of Ireland and Scotland – and consider its relationship with the less proximal, and perhaps a less sympathetic, England. For Ulster the greatest fears must be a re-eruption of sectarian violence.
The Republic of Ireland is also going to be greatly affected, especially over the matter of the border, and over the existing rights of so many UK residents to claim Irish nationality. Their passport office is already being swamped with applications. Brexit can only have a massively detrimental effect on the Republic, on its economy and on its people.
As for Wales, the prospect of being welded to a permanently 'Tory' England, ruled from Westminster by a London-centric elite is just horrendous. What may be good economic sense for 'Londonshire' has already proven to be economic poison to Wales: it can only get much, much, worse post Brexit.
It was interesting to note in the Referendum results that those areas which are strongly Welsh speaking voted to remain, even though they suffer much of the same problems of economic distress as the English speaking areas that voted to leave. I am tempted to wonder if their Welsh speaking protected them from the distortions of truth so virulently spread by the English tabloid press? They do not seem so infected by the collective xenophobia engendered by the year-in, year-out, streams of hate filled and fear inducing headlines: as the English tabloid press sowed, so have we reaped.
It is quite likely that whatever consensus is reached in Wales would likely be undermined by an ideologically opposed Westminster, which, holding the financial whip-hand, could enforce compliance with its wishes. We have already witnessed an effective undermining of the Welsh Assembly and Government over the last few years. One wonders how long it would be before a Tory dominated Westminster sought the dissolution of the Welsh Assembly? I cannot see it being tolerated for too long, unless it is emasculated and turned into branch office of Westminster PLC, doing exactly as it is bidden.
Having learned to its cost the price it has had to pay for having set up the Scottish Parliament – that of Scottish independence – Westminster will not want to risk the same happening again. Ultimately, the Assembly would have to go, in the mean time it will be diminished. Consider how successive Tory governments have diminished local government, and replaced it with direct rule from Westminster – academisation of schools is only too clear an example – or substituted privatised agencies in its place. There is such a strong taste for ruling as opposed to governing by consent at Westminster: so much not the Welsh way.
Wales is distinct from England in a very fundamental way: it still understands the importance of community, of shared and collective provision, of mutual help and support. In a privatised England these ideas are dying very quickly: Brexit will amplify that difference.
Post-Brexit South East England will dominate whatever is left of the UK. It will be even more shaped by ultra-free market thinking. What its uber-rich clientele want they will get. It is likely to become the world's laundry shop for tainted money – or, as the Panama Papers revealed, to be more so, as it appears to fill that role already. It will form its policies to enhance that process. Those policies will be poison to Wales, which needs an entirely different approach to its economic progress.
As England grows more polarised between rich and poor, there will be more and more removal of employment rights and attacks on other rights – consider even now the Trade Union legislation currently in process in Westminster. The Tory threat to abandon the European Convention on Human Rights is not idle. That is what will happen, no matter how strongly Wales opposes it.
The breakup of the UK does offer one possible solution that would offer many benefits to the four Celtic nations: a Celtic Federation.
Scotland would benefit from uniting with the Republic of Ireland by thus becoming automatically once more part of the EU. It would also automatically become part of the Euro zone, thus avoiding it having to have to create a separate currency. This would provide considerable economic stability and immediate benefits for its trade with the rest of the EU. It would be sheltered from the speculative effects of the international currency markets, which can wreck such havoc on minor currencies.
Ulster would benefit by escaping from that age old tension between its two communities – the Ulster Scots and the Ulster Nationalists. The Ulster Scots would appreciate the union with Scotland which would preserve so many of their links, both to Scottish Protestantism and even to Rangers Football Club. Likewise, the Ulster Nationalists would appreciate the union with the Republic, with its Catholic heritage and traditions. It would also benefit from being in a currency union with Ireland and Scotland, its immediate neighbours, as well as enjoying the financial stability and trading advantages of being in the Euro zone. The links with Scotland would counterbalance the threat felt by the Protestant majority of being dominated by a Catholic Ireland; the links with Ireland would reassure the Catholic minority that they are not marginalised.
The Republic would benefit from having not having to re-create a border with Ulster; from having a stronger collective voice in the world and even more so in the EU. The end of the toxic division between Ulster and itself would be a final healing of the rift created by partition nearly a hundred years ago. It would bring so much right relationship.
Wales would benefit from being united with three other countries that share so much common heritage, very much a common progressive outlook on the world, and where it would be one amongst a group of almost equal partners. There would also be the advantages conferred by being in a currency union that offers such stability and trading opportunities.
Collectively, such a Celtic Federation, with a population in the region of fourteen million, would rank ninth in the EU by population, and thus would have a much stronger collective voice.
Constituted as a federation, each would be able to enjoy considerable home-rule, only collaborating on a federal level where there was obvious common need. Each would be able to preserve their very distinct cultures and traditions, without fear of being marginalised by the others.
As a constituent state in such a Federation, Wales would be among equals, and its say would have something like equal weight. Left tied to England, the mismatch in size would be only too apparent, and Wales's voice would be entirely dismissible, not simply demographically, but economically. Like an unfortunate poor relation, we would be confined to an annex and told to behave appreciatively, being grateful for the occasional handout or cast-off.
Wales shares many of the same economic problems as the other Celtic countries, and as such, would benefit enormously from economic policies shaped to address those types of problem.
We have not yet reached the event horizon that will actually carry the UK out of the EU, although we are close to it, but we are, unless something dramatic happens, bound in that direction. If and when we are plunged over that edge, there needs to be a clear vision of what alternatives may suit Wales best: the Celtic Federation is one.