YouTube pulls plug on Myanmar junta

YOUTUBE has removed five channels run by Myanmar’s military for violating guidelines, it announced, as demonstrators defied growing violence by security forces and staged more anti-coup protests ahead of a special UN Security Council meeting on the country’s crisis. YouTube earlier pulled dozens of channels as part of a probe into content uploaded in a co-ordinated influence campaign. It followed Facebook’s earlier announcement that it had removed all Myanmar militarylinked pages from its site and from Instagram, which it owns.

IT has been next to impossible to paint a positive picture of the Brexit deal that came into force on January 1 – at least so far as the fishing industry is concerned. Endless promises that fishing would be the red line which UK negotiators would “die in a ditch” to defend turned out to fall far short of the pledges made.

And while no one should be surprised that an industry that plays such a relatively small part in shoring up Britain’s balance of payments might be given less than full backing when the crunch came, fishermen and the producers who export their goods have every reason to feel short-changed. Fishing was held up as the symbol of plucky Britain going it alone as an independent maritime nation... for many fishermen that now looks like little more than empty words.

And yet it is difficult not to feel just a little bit sorry for George Eustice, the Secretary of State at Defra and enthusiastic supporter of Brexit as he faces difficult questions at the Commons dispatch box and in TV interviews. The lorry loads of fish going off at the docks as French administrators move at a snail’s pace to process the paperwork and the labyrinthine rules to make it ever harder to send UK shellfish to Europe are not entirely of his doing.

That said, his use of the phrase “teething troubles” to describe the difficulties was ill-judged. If your fishing business or exporting operation could go to the wall because of the failure of the UK to secure the sort of deal needed, then the problems look a lot more than simply “teething troubles” and rather more like expensive and painful root canal work. In the strict sense of the phrase, however, Mr Eustice is right. Already trade is back up to around 85% of the level before Brexit took full effect. In time there seems no reason why it shouldn’t rise still higher. And while it is going to take some years for Britain to truly “take back control” of her fishing grounds, the direction of travel is the right one. Building new markets for fish, here at home, is also happening. Fishing may have been dealt a blow with the loss of easy access to EU markets where there is a hunger for our fish. For the most part, however, it can still thrive.

For some critics of Brexit, of course, spinning out the negative impact of the deal is part and parcel of the continuing campaign to beat the government with a metaphorical wet kipper.

There are still many – MPs included – who don’t want Brexit to work for Britain. They take delight in the many bumps in the road as the nation adjusts to life outside the EU.

The key issue for fishing is for the government to provide the necessary support to weather the storm unless or until markets can be restored and access to former customers in the EU return to the levels once enjoyed. If, for some, that proves impossible, they need to be helped to exit the industry.

The fault of the Brexiteers, who stopped at nothing to win the 2016 referendum, was in over-selling the benefits and underplaying the costs of leaving the EU.

That helped to persuade fishermen, among others, to back the leave vote. They must not now be left to hang out to dry.