Britain right to protect fishing rights – but we need France as an ally

IF Britain and France were Facebook friends, the state of their relationship might be summed up in two words made famous on the social media platform... “it’s complicated.”

Once an avowed enemy, France has been, officially at least, a close friend of Britain for well over a century and an ally through two World Wars.

But no one would pretend that the relationship has been an easy one. Compare it, for example, with the way Britain sees the United States. That relationship is more often than not referred to as “special.” That’s not how Britain and France view each other, on either side.

But things have reached a particularly low ebb in recent years, with Brexit reminding some people of old enmities and recent disagreements, over the deal, with the US, to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.

That arrangement, Aukus, prompted the cancellation by the Australians of an earlier arrangement to buy diesel-electric submarines from the French. Emmanuel Macron was apoplectic.

His humour had not improved very much when Britain delivered its latest slight against its nearest continental neighbour, turning down dozens of applications by French vessels to fish in UK and Channel Island waters.

“French fishing must not be taken hostage by the British for political ends,” said Annick Girardin, the French minister for the sea. Clément Beaune, the French minister for Europe, threatened that the EU could “take retaliatory action, collectively.”

What is perhaps most surprising about the way France has responded to the news of severely restricted access to UK fishing grounds is that they should be so surprised.

When Boris Johnson and others were campaigning for Brexit, fishing was a totemic issue way out of scale with its economic value to the UK. Fishermen in Britain may still feel they ended up with a bad deal, given all the promises made and all the weight that appeared to be riding on the sector during the tortuous Brexit negotiations. But, if the French – and indeed the rest of the EU – had been paying attention, they must have been able to deduce that Britain was always going to express its desire to take back control through excluding EU boats, as far as possible, from British territorial waters.

The UK said it was issuing licences to just 12 of the 47 small French boats which applied to fish in its territorial waters. Jersey, meanwhile, said it has turned down licence applications from 75 French boats.

The Channel Island was a flashpoint back in May this year when angry French fishermen denied the right to fish in the rich waters around Jersey threatened a blockade of St Helier, while France warned it would pull the plug on the island’s electricity supplies. Neither happened.

It is hard to see Britain backing down this time, or France being able to do very much more than simply exclaim in colourful Gallic language. In the longer term, however, fences do need to be mended. We are longterm allies and, in today’s world, we need all the friends we can get.