Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:58 pm on 3 October 2018.
Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I move our amendment to this motion. I was disappointed by the speech of the new leader of Plaid Cymru, who I welcome to his position, for its pessimism, its faintheartedness, its gloom, its utter lack of confidence in the people of Wales and the people of the United Kingdom to make a success of the great opportunities that becoming once again a sovereign, independent nation—which I should have thought would have been at the very heart of Plaid Cymru—gives us the opportunity to do. He made a speech like a kind of inverted Mr Micawber, just waiting for something to turn down. This is from people, of course, who never wanted a people's vote in the first place on whether we should join what was then the European Economic Community, which became the European Community, and which has evolved further into the European Union.
We've been promised referenda by Governments both of the Conservatives and of the Labour Party on the individual treaties that have extended the reach of European Governments in the periods since 1973, and those promises have been comprehensively broken. David Cameron didn't want the referendum on whether we should leave the EU now. He was forced into it because UKIP was breathing down the necks of Tory MPs, as Mark Reckless will be able to remind us, because he lived through it. And now, of course, the parties that don't like the result of that referendum want to reverse it. Although I must say that Adam Price's speech was directed not to his motion, which doesn't actually call for a second referendum on EU membership, but merely a referendum on the terms of our exit. So, if Plaid Cymru had the courage of its convictions, it should have put down a motion saying, 'We should have a referendum in the hope that we can reverse the decision of the last one.' I think David Melding had a most important contribution in his—