Where Wales went wrong

There is no land more lovely than Wales. I have walked through a magical forest to splash in the shallow, shimmering waters of the sea at the forested Newborough Beach in Anglesey and traipsed out to the monastery on the spit. I’ve struggled up Mount Snowdon while being pummelled by the angry Welsh wind and stared at by unimpressed sheep. Ten miles north-west, I have inspected the neat beauty of Caernarfon Castle staring into the Menai straits, strolled the pretty streets of Monmouth and Hay-on Wye, and lived it up in the rolling hills just over the border from Ludlow.

As a place of beauty and charm, and a fascinating history of royalty and intra-national power struggles, Wales has everything going for it. Why, then, does it use all its energy up on self-destruction? Why does it insist on turning itself into a laughing stock, drinking down unfiltered woke rubbish and dousing its wonderful natural and cultural heritage in the stuff? The country is like the teenager who is clever, quirky, and loved – yet still chooses to become a rampaging nightmare who squanders all the good in favour of drugs, binge-drinking and Marxism.

Unlike with a teenager, however, it has  become increasingly difficult to wave away Wales’s behaviour as a mere phase.