Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Brexit Minister (in respect of his Brexit Minister responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 2:41 pm on 20 March 2019.
I thank the Counsel General for that answer, but I want to turn to another priority. On Question Time on the BBC last week and on Sunday night on the BBC Wales Live programme and in conversations in the streets and the cafes and the pubs and clubs across Wales and with families and neighbours and on anti-social media, there is often a harsher, brutal and sometimes a downright nasty edge to the debate around Brexit. Now we know, as we see here today in the Chamber, that passions run high in such a high-stakes debate, but you can actually now touch and feel the anger from those on all sides of the debate—those who are desperate for Brexit, those who are desperate to avoid a cliff edge, those who are desperate to see a second referendum. It's fair to say that some seem happy to talk up the prospect of civil unrest, which I regard as wholly and probably criminally irresponsible. Be careful what you wish for.
In this country of Wales and in the UK, we resolve these issues through democratic means, because, flawed as all our democracies may be, it's far better than the alternatives of anarchy or dictatorship. So, my question to the Counsel General and, through him, to the whole Welsh Government, is this: whatever the outcome of the coming weeks and months, what can we and what can our Welsh Government do to repair the corrosive fissures that have now opened up in our communities, to heal the damaged relationship between the elected and the electorate and to build again a shared vision for the future of Wales behind which all can unite? Now more than ever is the time and the need for that vision, that ambition and that leadership that can unite all the people of Wales.