A Fisherman's regret

Johnson's uncompromising position on Brexit is doing Britain no favours. Reuters are reporting that Angela Merkel in a recent video conference suggested some member states are growing impatient and who can blame them. It might look tough to Brexiteers and the ERG but it doesn't mean anything in Brussels, Berlin or Paris. Everybody knows we will have to make the concessions in the end.  Tails do not wag dogs and the EU cannot offer any compromise on the LPF and governance, no matter how much damage we have to suffer to bring the government to its senses.

There may be room for some movement on fish but even here it is very limited. The FT report this morning that Britain's fishermen are becoming anxious:

"Boris Johnson has vowed to take back control of the UK’s “spectacular maritime wealth” but at 6am on Monday in Brixham, England’s biggest fishing port by value, there is nervousness that the prime minister’s efforts to defend the industry in post-Brexit EU trade talks could end in disaster."

Mr Ian Perkes director of Ian Perkes Fish Merchants has told the FT that if we exit without a deal and tariffs of even 5% are applied "we would be killed."  In fact if there's no deal the tariff on scallops would be 20%.  One might feel some sympathy with him. 

He is already said to be "grappling with the paperwork required to sell into the EU single market after January 1 — paperwork that will be needed regardless of whether there is a trade deal" describing it as a "nightmare."

He will apparently need to complete catch and health certificates for each consignment, covering perhaps 30 different boats catching different species and he has also been "warned that each truck, carrying maybe £150,000 of fish supplied by a number of different exporting firms, could be turned back at Calais if all of the paperwork is not in order."

In other words, even if his paperwork is in order, the fact that someone else's isn't could delay his consignment and make it unsaleable. A nightmare indeed.  However, what the FT don't report is that Mr Perkes voted enthusiastically for Brexit. I know this because he spoke to the American PBS TV channel in 2018:

This is what he said:

"There is never going to be any fish left on the dock. Every fish here for the last 30 years is sold. Nothing is ever left. There'll be no fish left rotting on the dock, I can assure you of that. I think business will continue, and we will thrive, which is why I voted out”.

Now the FT quote him saying he voted for Brexit BUT:

“I wish I hadn’t,” he said. “I never looked at the implications of the paperwork. I was brainwashed.”

Pennies drop slowly in Brixham. It has taken five years for him to realise he has been sold out and persuaded to vote to destroy or potentially destroy his own business. He will not "thrive" after January 1st and he might even be out of business immediately if not within a few months.

I wonder when he will begin to look at Nigel Farage and realise that he and all the other UKIP members and the other Brexiteers in the Tory party were wrong about EU membership?  The government is trying to drive a hard bargain that may well end up destroying the very industry they claim to be standing up for.  Johnson is like Scargill with the miners or Red Robbo with the car workers, pressing the self destruct button because they couldn't recognise the inherent weakness in their position.

Finally I want to end this morning with a tweet from Simon Fraser, former Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office and Business Departments: 

1/6: A short #Brexit retrospective as we enter the last month. Four and a half years ago we started down this path with little understanding of the route or the destination, pushed by ideologues who exploited the diverse and often reasonable grievances of many people.

— Simon Fraser (@SimonFraser00) November 30, 2020

His thread reads:

Over 4 years #Brexit ideologues have driven us inexorably to more extreme forms of separation, losing the good will of European allies, sidelining our globally successful #services industries, bringing cost & uncertainty for manufacturers & farmers, putting #jobs at risk.

3/6: With #Brexit we have created uncertainty for millions of #British and #EU citizens, weakened our #NHS, overlooked the arguments of our scientists, reduced opportunities for our young people and brought the unity of the UK further into question.

4/6: Now, with no #Brexit trade arrangement in place with our biggest market one month before the deadline, a UK government that aspires to leadership in a high-tech global economy says it is ready to abandon the deal over the sharing of fish stocks.

5/6: And this at a time when President #Biden offers a chance of realignment between #Europe and #America on the big challenges ahead on #climate, health, #trade and #China, and the EU is preparing to respond.

6/6: So far we have seen no tangible benefit from #Brexit. I hope we make it a success, but we are making huge sacrifices on the altar of a facile notion of #sovereignty and independence. Deal or no deal, the #Brexit we are getting is not what we were sold in 2016.

He is right about the deal being negotiated not being what was promised in 2016 - there is very little talk now of sunlit uplands, they are more like unlit uplands and even the small voices talking about the "opportunities" of Brexit are becoming ever fainter, drowned out by the catastrophe about to engulf us.

As each day has gone by since I started this blog in 2017, my own belief that Brexit is only a temporary thing grows stronger. Nothing the Brexiteers said has come true and seems unlikely to - as Mr Perkes is finding out. On the other hand all the problems - without exception - raised by remainers in 2016 has either come true or will come true very shortly.

So, I ask myself how long can it last?