Holy mackerel... is this a reason to scupper deal?
SIR Edward Heath is the Conservative Prime Minister who sold out Britain’s fishermen in 1973 to take us into what became the European Union. Boris Johnson does not want to be remembered as the one who sold them out to take us out.
That is one of the main reasons for what appears to be the final stumbling block in the Brexit trade talks: fish.
The idea that the UK cuts all ties with Brussels in less than a fortnight without a trade deal, with the economic chaos, lost jobs, never-ending gridlock in Kent and higher food prices that would ensue, all because we cannot agree about fish seems absurd.
Britain’s 12,000 fishermen represent less than half of 1 per of the UK workforce. Roughly the same number are expected to lose their jobs as a result of the closure of the Debenhams department store chain.
One commentator claimed yesterday that Harrods in London is worth more to the economy than the fishing industry.
Heath is the bogeyman of every Tory Brexiteer. I imagine some have his portrait on dartboards in their shed.
Like many politicians who fought in the Second World War Heath passionately believed in European unity.
Unfortunately, he saw surrendering British fishing waters as a price worth paying to achieve it.
Brussels, not Britannia, has ruled the British coastal waves ever since.
The 700-strong fishing fleet of Grimsby – the world’s biggest fishing port in the 1950s, where fishermen were known as ‘three-day millionaires’ for their spending sprees during their three days off after a successful catch – has dwindled to a few crabbing boats.
In statistical terms, the extent to which EU trawlers plunder our waters is shocking. The French take 84 per cent of English Channel cod – cod, the key part of our fish and chips Friday treat! – compared with our feeble 9 per cent.
In total EU fishing boats haul in eight times more fish in our waters than we do; they take 173 times more herring.
But it is more complex than that.
THE Europeans eat more fish than we do: a trip to any daily market in France will tell you that. Much of the fish we do catch is exported to the EU; and much of the fish we eat is imported from the EU.
Why? The Europeans s love our most valuable e fish, mackerel; we prefer r tuna and prawns caught t in the Med.
I recall ordering mackerel at a restaurant in a Cornish fishing village years ago and enquiring why I had been served inedible frozen fish when I could see a trawler landing a fresh catch a few yards away in the harbour. I was told nonchalantly: ‘ All the fish caught here are exported to Spain. We only buy frozen.’ Things have improved since then, in no small part to Cornwall’s own fish chef supreme Rick Stein. And the EU trade row is not just about fish, it is about personal and nati national pride – on both side sides of the Channel. Many Tory MPs say Johnson’s ‘take back control’ Brexit slogan will be me meaningless if we cannot even take back control of our coastline. The Prime Minister has woven it into his ‘sovereignty’ argument, with patriotic vows to make Britain an ‘independent coastal state’ once again an and ‘recapture our spectacular ta national maritime wealth.’ It is even more personal so for Michael Gove, who persuaded Johnson so to campaign to leave the EU and is the Cabinet minister in charge of Brexit negotiations. During the EU referendum in 2016 Scots-born Gove was visibly moved when he told how his adoptive father’s fish processing business in Aberdeen went bust because of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy.
Gove is said to fear ‘a new Battle of Trafalgar in the Channel’ with clashes between the Royal Navy and French fishermen.
He regularly reminds Johnson there is another Scottish political dividend for Johnson if he wins his tug of war with the EU over fish: it could stop the break up of the United Kingdom. More than half of Britain’s fishing waters are Scottish.
WHILE most Scots opposed Brexit, Johnson loves to goad Nicola Sturgeon that if Scotland breaks free from the UK, it will never get its cherished fishing waters back from Brussels.
Time is running out to solve the EU deadlock over fish.
Johnson has told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen he will settle for winning back control of our waters in three years: she has demanded eight years, mainly to appease Emmanuel Macron, who is terrified of upsetting French fishermen.
Most ministers I have spoken to expect them to meet somewhere in the middle. (One pointed out that if we got all our waters back on January 1 we wouldn’t be able to catch the fish anyway because we do not have enough boats.)
With luck Johnson will get most of what he wants.
If he does, more of us need to start developing a taste for mackerel. Close your eyes and it’s not so different to tuna.