Some companies sell 95% of their catch to the EU. It's hard to see them surviving while others will have to downsize drastically. It is a body blow.
Meanwhile, luminaries from UK fashion, an industry worth £35 billion a year to our GDP, have written an open letter to the government warning they face being "decimated" by a combination of the loss of freedom of movement and costly customs red tape.
Like a lot of other businesses they are calling for something to be done, a "fix" being applied. This is to misunderstand Brexit. There is no fix. The TCA sets out what Lord Frost has negotiated under Johnson's red lines. He negotiated a disaster with his eyes open and the results are now laid bare for all to see. It is what it is, there are no fixes.
What these people are seeing are simply the "mechanical consequences" of Brexit that Michel Barnier warned about frequently. over the past two years.
It was all foreseen and inevitable as far back as October 2016 when Theresa May decided with her advisers Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill to leave the single market and the customs union. We know that nobody else in the cabinet was involved because the former Chancellor, Phillip Hammond, gave an interview last November.
In it he says the first time he knew the UK would be getting a pretty hard Brexit was when he sat and listened to May announce it to the party conference. He had to sit on the front bench and keep a smile on his face as if it had been a collaborative decision made by ministers. It wasn't. There was no discussion at all.
Next this morning, SPS and other checks at Belfast and Larne under the NI protocol have been suspended and staff sent home because of threats to their safety, presumably by loyalists. It is an echo of how the troubles started fifty years ago. Threats are made, the police step in, this inflames the situation, more police are needed. Soon the PSNI are unable to cope and a decision will need to be made about sending in the army - who is going to do that?
The Road Haulage Association have also published a letter to Michael Gove saying their repeated warnings about problems at both the Irish and NI sea borders have gone unneeded and that the government is not doing enough to resolve them. Richard Buchanan says things he highlighted on 12 January have not been addressed. He calls for "an immediate roundtable with Northern Irish hauliers to find a workable solution and provide financial support for those who’ve suffered significant losses as a result."
None of this comes as a surprise to remainers or indeed anybody who took the trouble to understand what Brexit was all about.
We should be encouraged that all these problems are starting to reach the mainstream media in a big way. Peter Foster of the FT tweeted a link to a Faisal Islam report for the BBC about the mountain of paperwork now needed to export to the EU:
Some time ago I recall reporting from Ukraine-Polish border: the queues of trucks, wads of paperwork on the dashboard. Still can’t quite believe that’s us now. https://t.co/XJTIVq4Ywn
— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) February 2, 2021
Finally, The Times run an article about the result of a re-run of the 2016 referendum - assuming it was possible. The YouGov poll shows nearly half (49 per cent) say they would vote to Remain against 37 per cent who would vote to leave. When don't knows, won't says are removed (13%) this would leave Remain winning by 56% to 43% - quite a margin.
However, when asked how they’d vote in a referendum on joining the EU again, however, things are a lot closer, with 42 per cent saying they would for rejoining the EU and 40 per cent saying they would vote against joining with 18% don't knows. The article says it's close and it is, but don't forget in previous polling there has been no majority at all for rejoining - now there is, albeit a small one.
