VAUGHAN Gething AM, tells us that Wales is doing as well in healthcare as other UK nations, but the problem for Wales is that the amount England spends on health helps to determine the block grant for Wales.

This makes it all the more urgent that Labour opposes Theresa May’s hard Brexit, which her chancellor admits will mean continuing austerity.

Giving Parliament a “meaningful” vote on Britain’s final withdrawal will be far too late to prevent all the damage done by triggering Article 50.

In fact the damage is already happening in our hospitals where staff are stretched to breaking point. Jobs are threatened in both financial services and manufacturing as companies, such as Ford in Bridgend, are unwilling to invest in a disunited kingdom that is splitting from our most important trading partners.

Ironically, Theresa May, in accusing the SNP of “tunnel vision in pursuing a narrow nationalism of independence at any cost which threatens our precious union” fails to recognise that this is precisely what she is doing in her interpretation of the EU referendum as a vote to commit economic suicide by leaving the single market.

The chancellor will find it impossible to fund the promised £1.8bn to compensate Wales for the loss of European funding on top of subsidising farming in place of EU subsidies, if we are to protect our countryside.

How can this be ‘the will of the people’ when 63 per cent of the electorate did not vote for Brexit?

Even the 37 per cent who voted Leave did not vote to make themselves poorer.

Instead of another referendum on Scotland’s independence, SNP MPs should join forces with Plaid Cymru, Northern Irish MPs, and Liberal Democrats to demand another referendum, requiring a majority of the electorate, before Article 50 is triggered.

This might also save the Tories from themselves as a party which has been landed with a Ukip front bench and another prime minister who will destroy herself, her party and her country by the very issue that propelled her into Number 10.

The great irony is that only Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism can now save English nationalism from itself.

Margaret Phelps

Raisdale Gardens

Penarth