Wednesday 6 January 2021

Storm clouds are gathering for Johnson

Fishermen seem to be the first group in 2021 to realise they have been duped by Brexit and in particular, by Boris Johnson. They certainly won't be the last. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Problems are slowly beginning to appear at Dover and the NI border as well. The Yorkshire Post has an article: Whitby fisherman says 'crews will be worse off in 2021 than before they left the EU' which is not what I assume they thought they would be hearing when many of them supported Nigel Farage and Brexit in 2016.

Arnold Locker, chairman of Locker Trawlers in Whitby, and former chairman of the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, believes Environment Secretary George Eustice should resign and says the betrayal of fishing communities is worse than before, because politicians like Eustice,  Gove and PM Johnson "knew exactly what they were doing when they devastated coastal communities."

Next, UK Fisheries, owners of The Kirkella, a modern freezer trawler operating out of Hull, complain that they have lost access to their main fishing grounds off Norway which they have fished for decades, and don’t know when, or even if, they will be able to fish off Norway again. They say the lack of an agreement with Norway threatens the end tof English distant waters fishing.

This story was best captured in two headlines, a couple of days apart in the ever reliable Daily Express, always guaranteed to have the daftest take on all things Brexit:

The Brexit supporting rag must have thought that we were the only sovereign state in Europe.

We also got a tweet from Lochfyne Langoustines in Scotland who say they have been "stopped" from exporting to the EU and see no benefit "what so ever" from leaving the EU. This is because they are not on the approved list of Argyll & Bute Council and the council was on holiday yesterday so the couldn't get on the list. The fisherman in the video also doesn't know where to get an EHC or how much it will cost:

All of this comes on top of a report by the FT in December which highlighted that one Brixham fisherman was already "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." John Perkes said he had voted for Brexit but wishes he hadn't, "I never looked at the implications of the paperwork. I was brainwashed.”

Mr Perkes himself explains:

And yesterday we learned from a leaked email that problems are emerging with the NI border,  A "top customs expert" has admitted the Irish Sea border is ‘cumbersome’ and hugely complex – even for him, with 40 years experience.

Robert Hardy, one of the central figures in the £100 million-a-year government-backed Trader Support Scheme (TSS) which ministers have claimed will smooth over the Irish Sea border, said in an email to senior industry figures yesterday that “the new processes are cumbersome and need to be done in a certain order”

But more ominously, he added: “We expect heavy volumes at Dover from tonight as GB exports start to ramp up and many transporters do not have transit and EU clearance in place. There is a huge shortage of customs agents and whilst this might not be visible just yet, it will be from tonight as the pressure will be on export documentation.

“We understand that France have already started to send vehicles back for not having the correct documentation.”

This is confirmed by Ciaran the courier who tweeted this morning that a friend of his who left for Calais yesterday (Tuesday) has been held at Dover all night.

And, as he noted volumes are quite low at the moment but starting to 'ramp up.'

Yesterday saw a record number of new covid-19 cases (nearly 61,000) with 830 deaths.  Cases in London seem to have plateaued but are rising quickly in other areas. The peak may be a few days away yet.

Finally, it appears some Tory MPs, new ones from the 2019 intake, have lost confidence in the PM - I'm amazed that anybody ever had confidence in him - according to a report from the FT and have gone so far as to write letters to 1922 Committee chair Graham Brady:

The hapless prime minister is in the Commons today to get new coronavirus lockdown legislation approved and Starmer will eviscerate him. He cannot be looking forward to it. January promises to get a lot stormier and more difficult for Johnson - and it's all down to his own calamitous mishandling of Brexit and the pandemic.

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