NICK CLEGG has warned that Brexit will be 'exceptionally difficult' for farmers in Herefordshire and border areas if Britain was to leave the European single market.

The former deputy Prime Minister made the comments on a visit to Hay-on-Wye on Friday, when he visited medicine developer PCI Pharma Services, which exports 40 per cent of what they manufacture to the European Union and launched the Welsh Liberal Democrats manifesto.

Mr Clegg also returned to Hay Festival where he last visited in 2010. This time he gave a talk about his new book titled Between the Extremes.

"I wouldn't ever have anticipated seven years ago, returning to the Hay Festival, that our country is about to leave the European Union and doing so in the most self-harming and damaging way possible," said Mr Clegg.

"I would never have guessed that we would be putting ourselves in this most perilous position as a country. People on my side of the argument lost the referendum last year but that doesn't alter my view that what is best for my kids is to remain part of the wider European family of nations.

"There is a huge amount of concern of what Brexit means to people's own circumstances, communities and their families."

Mr Clegg said he is particularly concerned about what Brexit will mean for farmers as he believes it will be economically damaging for them.

Since his last visit to the area in 2010 the Liberal Democrats have lost strongholds for the party in both Hereford and Brecon and Radnorshire constituencies to the Conservatives.

When asked whether he regretted going into a coalition with their rival party, Mr Clegg said: "What was our alternative? To let the country go to pot back in 2010 and say well it's all too controversial and difficult and we might be harmed politically so we're going to bury our heads in the sand and let our country pay the consequences.

"I wouldn't have been able to live with that. Of course it was a controversial thing to do, we're not daft, we understood that.

"As I speak to voters across the country they recognise oddly enough in hindsight more than at the time that the Liberal Democrats did the right thing for the country. We are trying hard and we are clearly recovering as a party from a very bad result two years ago."