It was a pitchy swell, but dextrous debater Gove didn’t capsize

ANY Whitehall officials who thought fishing rights were piffling – of interest only to seadogs and flapping-anoraked think-tank wonks – should reconsider. The Government’s (at present temporary) surrender to the EU on fishing caused prolonged unease yesterday for Environment Secretary Michael Gove. He faced a pitchy swell.

Any debater less dextrous than Mr Gove might have capsized. Even he looked a bit nauseous by the end of it. But the Brexiteer in him must have been pleased that the House was for once nearly united in attacking the meddlesome European Commission. MP after MP condemned the decision to imprison our fleet in the EU’s common fisheries policy (CFP) for another 21 months.

Many of those who did so belonged to parties that, er, wanted to remain in the CFP for ever.

Mr Gove had three arguments and he used them repeatedly, his voice occasionally close to tetchiness. The pinker he turned, the more he might have been forgiven for snapping ‘don’t blame me, blame Downing Street’.

At one point he indeed said Theresa May would answer some point of detail when she comes to the House next Monday to make a statement. Always florid with flattery, Mr Gove tried to court favour with MPs by naming towns in their constituencies – a Scot, he is naturally good at rattling off the names of multi-syllabled Highland toons.

He kept telling Hon Members how eloquent they were (subtext: but not as eloquent as me!).

He recalled, two or three times, his own family’s association with fishing, his father having been an Aberdeen fish merchant and one of his grandfathers having gone to sea. The House was not entirely convinced. And yet, as I say, a less honeyed master of rhetoric would have gone glug-glug-glug. If yesterday’s Urgent Question had been answered by, say, a Hammond or Truss or Javid, we could have been looking at bubbles on the surface.

Here were the three Gove excuses: the cave-in, though ‘suboptimal’ (Goveian euphemism for ‘horrible’) is only temporary; other political parties are even more pathetic than us Tories on fishing; the final Brexit deal will be a thing of wondrous beauty which will finally liberate our fishing fleet from the brigands of Brussels. Cue Sir Granville Ransome Bantock’s Hebridean Symphony.

The trouble with Mr Gove’s promises about the future is that fishing has since 1970 repeatedly been lied to and let down by ministers and officialdom. Why should they be believed this time?

SCOTS Tories attacked the transition deal. ‘There’s no way I can sell it as anything like a success,’ said Douglas Ross (Con, Moray). ‘I feel very badly let down,’ said John Lamont (Con, Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk). Bill Grant (Con, Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock) had some line about ‘fishing being sacrificed on the altar of Brexit’.

The Scots Tories may be newish to the House but they were in open fury. Nationalists competed with them for anger. ‘Codswallop! All at sea!’ cried Pete Wishart (SNP, Perth & N Perthshire). ‘Tory sprats!’ boomed another. Alistair Carmichael (Orkney & Shetland) weighed in for the Lib Dems, as did Brexiteer Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) from the Labour benches.

Cornish Tories such as the usually placid Derek Thomas (St Ives) and Steve Double (St Austell & Newquay), and even Devon’s Sarah Wollaston (Con, Totnes) who has been all over the deck on Brexit, all made cross noises.

The DUP’s Sammy Wilson said many would be ‘alarmed and concerned’ by this extension of EU directives and controls. Eurosceptic Sir Edward Leigh (Con, Gainsborough) was ‘bitterly disappointed’ and Anne Main (Con, St Albans), who does indignation like a goosed Mary Whitehouse, said ‘EU trawlers have plundered our waters’. Our waters – a phrase to make you cross your legs.

Sir Desmond Swayne (Con, New Forest W) snorted that it was just as well this implementation period was going to be shorter than originally suggested. Indeed. The Treasury once wanted five years! The House’s mood yesterday was on all sides markedly more Eurosceptic.