‘There’s no jobs’: struggle and regret in a Welsh town that backed Brexit

W here Ebbw Vale’s steelworks once stood is now a cluster of gleaming modern buildings including a hospital, a leisure centre and a college. Over the past decade, these public facilities have been joined by a public-private cybersecurity research centre and two tech firms. A new railway station opened at the site in 2015. Yet, during the Guardian’s visit to the Welsh valleys town last week, the area was quiet. Nearly as many sheep as people appeared to be using the new facilities: a ewe and three lambs, escaped from somewhere, busied themselves in a strip of rewilded land next to the tech buildings. “We don’t get as many visitors as we would like,” said John Edwards, 77, a volunteer at the Ebbw Vale Works Museum, an archive of the area’s coal, iron and steelmaking past in the steel mill’s former general offices.“The train station is busy in the mornings, it’s packed with people going to Cardiff. We’ve become a commuter town.” John Edwards: ‘We don’t get as many visitors as we would like.’ Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian After the Ebbw Vale steelworks closed in 2002, Blaenau Gwent received the maximum amount of EU funding available for structural and regional development programmes. Much of the money went towards the regeneration projects on the old site. Unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland, Wales voted leave in the 2016 EU referendum, although research suggests the Welsh result may have been skewed by retired English people . …