Fishermen ‘betrayed’ by May’s Brexit deal

Backlash at transition agreement that gives EU control of UK waters until end of 2020

THERESA MAY is facing a Brexit backlash from Conservative MPS over her “abject betrayal” of Britain’s fishermen, with rebels planning a fishing boat protest on the Thames.

Jacob Rees-mogg, the leader of a 60-strong group of Eurosceptic Tory MPS, is due to board a boat and throw fish into the river next to Parliament in protest at the alleged “sell-out”.

A Brexit transition deal agreed with Brussels yesterday allows the EU to maintain control of Britain’s territorial waters until the end of 2020, which protesters described as “a potential death sentence” for the fishing fleet.

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservatives leader, joined the growing rebellion as she warned Mrs May that the 13 Tory MPS north of the border would oppose any Brexit deal that “fails to deliver full control over fish stocks and vessel access”.

Fishing is a totemic issue for the Tories, who won key coastal seats in Scotland and the west after making promises about using Brexit to protect the industry.

Douglas Ross, the Moray MP, said: “It would be easier to get someone to drink a pint of cold sick than to sell this as a success.”

Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, has spoken passionately about his upbringing in Aberdeen, where he claimed his family’s fish-processing firm was destroyed by EU policies.

Last week he joined forces with Ms Davidson to say Britain must leave the Common Fisheries Policy on exiting the EU in March next year and rejected the EU’S demand for “existing” access to British waters in a future trade deal. The controversy over fishing rights was one of a series of climbdowns announced by David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, yesterday ahead of a meeting of EU leaders this week to ratify the transition deal.

Mrs May also abandoned her personal pledge that free movement would end the day of Brexit. EU migrants arriving during the transition period will have the same rights as those arriving before Brexit.

The Government accepted that if no agreement could be reached on a bespoke customs arrangement for Northern Ireland, a “backstop” option of regulatory alignment with the EU would be written into the legal text of the transition deal.

The Government has also accepted the EU’S timetable of a transition period ending on New Year’s Eve 2020, three months earlier than the two years ministers wanted.

Downing Street highlighted the fact that Britain had won the right to not only negotiate but also sign trade deals during transition, that British citizens will maintain full freedom of movement in the EU until the end of transition, and that the agreement will apply in full to Gibraltar, contrary to the wishes of Spain and much of the EU.

Mr Davis and Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief Brexit negotiator, hailed the agreement as “a decisive step” towards Britain’s final withdrawal from the EU and the announcement was broadly welcomed by businesses as providing greater certainty, prompting the pound to rise in value.

However, the issue of fishing rights is likely to overshadow Thursday’s

Two years ago Scotland’s fishing communities voted Leave to end the control the EU’S Common Fisheries Policy had over their industry. And in last year’s general election they backed the Tories, against the EU enthusiasts of the SNP, for the self-same reason. Today they’re not so sure. They thought they’d be escaping the clutches of the CFP as soon as Britain leaves Europe but yesterday they learnt that they’ll still be subject to its control until 2020. And they’re growing deeply suspicious about what happens after that.

Yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon was typing the words “sell-out” into her Twitter account almost before Michel Barnier and David Davis had started, never mind finished, their Brussels press conference. She was referring to the recent joint statement that Ruth Davidson had signed with Michael Gove that Scottish fishermen would be outside the clutches of the hated CFP as soon as Britain left the EU – ie next March – but yesterday it emerged that it will take a fair bit longer than that.

To say that the Scottish Tory leader is “disappointed” with what was announced yesterday would be a huge understatement, just as it would be in describing the fishermen’s leaders’ reaction as not best pleased.

The former has accepted that she hasn’t delivered what she promised but warned Theresa May that she won’t accept anything short of full control of the UK’S fishing grounds, come 2020. But until then, as Bertie Armstrong, the fishermen’s leader, said, the CFP would continue to rule.

And beyond 2020, who knows? The fishermen have been let down before. Yet it was all once so different. More than 40 years ago Britain regarded its fishing fleet as crucial to its national interest – so important that it thought nothing of sending the Royal Navy off into Arctic Waters to defend British trawlers from Icelandic gun boats.

This was what became known as the Third Cod War, when in the winter of 1976 more than 20 frigates were at various times deployed to protect our trawlers after Iceland unilaterally imposed a 200-nautical-mile limit around its coasts. On board HMS Leander as more of a fish, than war, correspondent, I witnessed dramatic incidents as British sailors put their ships in harm’s way to protect trawlers from attempts by Icelandic gunboats to cut their nets. There were scores of near-misses as well as a few rammings and at least one death as these two Nato members locked horns in the frozen waters.

Although there were numerous trawlers from the North East of Scotland, the bulk were from Hull, Grimsby and Fleetwood, which had constantly to summon Her Majesty’s frigates to rescue them.

Iceland won that “war”. But it wasn’t gunboats that sunk those trawlers; politics of a different kind did that. Ted Heath’s Common Market entry tactics had declared our fishing industry “expendable”. Thus did we see the demise of those fishing ports, with the result that what’s left of the UK’S fishing industry is concentrated in the North East of Scotland, especially Peterhead. However, all the rules, including catch sizes, are decided in Brussels through the CFP.

It was to end this and to regain control of our territorial waters that people living in those communities voted for Brexit and who’ve played such a major part in the Scottish Tory revival. Were they wrong?

It would seem from the angry comments of Tory MPS Douglas Ross and John Lamont that they certainly think that Theresa May’s Government is letting them down.