After writing yesterday's post about Peter North and the tweet of his that went viral, I noticed other people on Twitter were commenting about it and about his father too. I used to read his EU Referendum blog every morning but since the coronavirus pandemic outbreak he has taken to posting about that so I don't read it so much these days. Dr North (the father) portrays himself as some kind of world-leading authority on pandemics exactly as he did on Brexit and you might wonder why he doesn't sit on SAGE or in the Cabinet Office advising ministers.
The answer to this apparent conundrum is in the North's political attitude. I know they are at the far end of the spectrum but I didn't quite realise how far until I spotted this tweet:
Remember this? Remember what we are dealing with. Don't give an inch with these brextremists. pic.twitter.com/yhsiJ7UyVd— EU Flag Mafia (@EUflagmafia) July 6, 2020
Both of them pile in on Jessica Simor, a QC apparently, with hair-raising talk of a "civil war" if Brexit was thwarted and a battle bigger than the one "that the nation had with Hitler." Peter talks about "lefty QC's" [sic] being the first to "swing from lampposts."
Imagine believing a civil war was the price for achieving something you now describe as a "mess".
I'm not sure when the original exchange took place, I assume it was last year sometime - but now Brexit has been achieved they seem unhappy with the result - as they would be even if the EU was rolling over and conceding everything. The North family are professional complainers and make a living out of it. Peter's tweet was the first explicit acknowledgement that their dream is becoming a nightmare.
I noted a few weeks ago Dr North was boasting about his blog hitting 100K viewings per day, which I do not doubt at all. But it's troubling when men with such views get so much public attention.
I thought that Richard had virtually given up on Brexit having achieved what he set out to do, he appeared to have dropped the subject altogether as if washing his hands of the whole sorry mess after spending three years criticising the government's handling of it.
This morning he is back on it with the first of a two-part diatribe about fishing, raking up a story of how the British fishing industry was sold out by politicians in the early 1970s when the first negotiations began about Britain's entry into the EEC. It all fits in with the narrative pursued by North for thirty years or more. He co-authored a book on the EU called The Great Deception: Can the European Union Survive? described as not so much false as ludicrous - with the central theme being that the EU is a great conspiracy to deceive a bamboozled European public.
Today's post is a rehash of the problems of the CFP - a topic about which I declare now that I know little by the way - for Britain's fishing industry. But I do know that logic and economics must eventually prevail in these matters however passionate the feelings. And I suspect we are simply skirting the same issues now in London as the latest round of trade talks is in progress.
North himself produces the nail in the second paragraph but fails to hit it on the head.
He writes that fishing "is of enormous significance to the Eurosceptic 'community' and outweighs any considerations of its economic value" and goes on to talk of "bad faith" on the part of the EEC as it was then.
The problem that Gove and Johnson and Frost will find is exactly the same as it was in the 1970s. Fishing is worth about £1 billion a year and pales against car manufacturing and financial services. Politicians have a difficult balancing act to perform on many issues and fishing is no different. They harnessed the fishermen to help deliver the Brexit vote among coastal communities but are now coming up against the sad but unavoidable reality.
Do you protect fishermen at the expense of thousands of jobs in manufacturing, agriculture or banking and insurance worth perhaps a hundred billion a year to Britain? Of course you cannot do it, simply because the economic facts won't allow you to.
There is nothing so certain than that the UK's fishing industry - where about half the quota has been sold to foreign companies and vessels by the British fishermen who owned them - will be "sold-out" once again. It cannot be any other way.
Being European means sharing resources and competing fairly. Why would the EU27 give us access to their market of 450 million wealthy consumers and 22 million businesses while allowing us exclusive rights to fish in UK waters and sell them the produce while their own vessels are tied up in port?
We should have an advantage anyway being closer to the rich fishing grounds around these shores.
No, instead of carping (sorry) about fish Dr North should look at the bigger picture.
