When UKIP tell us not to worry, that we can walk on water, it will be best not to believe them

Guest post by Peter Sain ley Berry Treasurer, Wales Council of European Movement. and Former Secretary Wales Council of SDP in the 80s and Alliance Committee member. With Peter at British Wool Marketing Board Conference  - discussing key points to make when I was debating with an UKIP MEP last month. Real jobs and livelihoods are being discounted for daydreams.  Well done to Carwyn Jones for launching the campaign for Wales to remain in the EU and in particular stressing the 200,000 jobs in Wales that are associated with trade with the EU and which would be at risk if Britain were to vote to leave. UKIP immediately hit back with accusations of scaremongering. They would, wouldn't they, having nothing else to say? And it is true that Wales would not lose 200,000 jobs the day after Brexit. But it is surely incontestable that over the following ten years many of those jobs would surely go as fewer international companies came to invest in an out-of-the-EU Wales and the ones here now stopped investing and gradually withdrew. And the alternative? Pie in the sky. Assertion after assertion. We will be better off because UKIP asserts we shall. Leap over the cliff. I've designed you a parachute. Of course it will work!  Real jobs and livelihoods are being discounted for daydreams. But what Government at all levels needs to do is to explain why Britain chose to join the EU and then why it chose to build it and expand it to create the very important  and powerful international organisation we have today. Britain helped build the EU, the greatest single market in the world, the greatest economic and diplomatic partnership, ending centuries of brutal European wars and conflict. Everyone needs to realise and recognise this, admit this, explain this before it is too late. As it is we all stand in danger of as Shakespeare put it:  'throwing away the dearest thing (they) owned as though it were a careless trifle.' If you are up a creek then it helps to have a paddle, not throw that paddle away. And if UKIP tell us not to worry, that we can walk on water, it will be best not to believe them.