What an ill-starred anniversary this is. I won't use my contribution today to rehearse the lies that were told during the 2016 referendum—they are a matter of public record—but I do take exception to the tone of the latter half of the Conservative motion with its focus on opportunities, conveniently ignoring the power grab from Westminster under the internal market Act, and the EU successor schemes that, only last week, I explained to the Chamber seemed calculated to enrich Tory-supporting areas at the expense of our communities. No mention of the threatened cuts to our arts sector, our students' ability to study, form relationships and flourish abroad—all taken away.

When I first came to this Senedd and was spokesperson on Brexit, it seemed that all of our bandwidth was taken up with trade deals, news from negotiations, and division bells reverberating all the way from Westminster to our Senedd. I felt haunted by the awareness of all that was passing our attention by—the could, the would, the should, the might-have-beens that could not be because Brexit was taking all of our attention. Now, the sorry saga of Brexit is too often relegated to written statements. Updates that affect the livelihoods and life chances of citizens are pushed to pages written down, not spoken or scrutinised.

I don't blame the Welsh Government, and goodness knows COVID has had to take so much of our attention, but Llywydd, outside the Chamber there hangs still a sense of what might have been, no longer perhaps in terms of legislative time or Government priority, but lives put on hold, EU citizens who've lived for years amongst us having to reapply for their right to reside, a sense of dense interbelonging and shared aspirations sidelined, and horizons shrinking and crumpling in. And across the sea, discord and tension in Northern Ireland grows louder, stoked by Westminster Ministers who didn't bother to care about the impact that their laissez-faire, lazy braggadocio would have on what is quite literally a matter of life and death. 

Llywydd, the motion speaks of opportunities. I would speak of opportunities lost—the opportunity cost of red tape, form filling, the roads not taken because now they are blocked. In 'Hard Border' the poet Clare Dwyer Hogg reminds us that

'chance and hope come in forms like steam and smoke'.

Not all of the impacts of Brexit are as tangible as lines of lorries on a motorway. I would remind the Chamber of the journeys never taken, the loves never found, challenges missed before they could be faced, triumphs and tribulations we might have shared; those might-have-beens dissipating and disappearing like smoke in the wind.