Fisherman and the future

Shellfish farmers have formed a group and are planning to take George Eustice to court over assurances that the trade in live bivalve molluscs (LBMs) would be able to continue after Brexit. This is according to a Guardian report on Wednesday.  Dr North, who writes extensively on this stuff covered it yesterday. The EU say the 'ban' is due to pre-existing rules which prevent LBMs being imported from Class B waters without being washed and cleaned (depurated).  

Dr North, who as we know sits just above the European Court of Justice as the final arbiter of the acquis communitaire, maintains the EU Commission is wrong. In fact, he says "the overwhelming balance of evidence is that the Commission is in the wrong,"

North didn't mention one particular section of the letter the Shellfish farmer's legal representative's have sent to George Eustice, it was this:

Their letter said: “Our clients and the Shellfish Association of Great Britain have been in discussions with Victoria Prentis MP (parliamentary undersecretary for farming, fisheries and food) and were informed in a telephone conversation on 9 March that the EU’s position is simply wrong.

“However, no legal basis or advice from Defra has been provided to support this position. Indeed, our clients have been forced to seek independent counsel’s opinion on this matter, and counsel advises that the EU position is tenable.”

So, now some legal counsel has had a look at it and clearly doesn't believe the overwhelming evidence is on DEFRA's side. They think the EU are correct or at the very least have a 'tenable' case.  If the case against the EU was really as clear as North suggests I am surprised that after three solid months, nobody except him has spotted it.

DEFRA are still arguing that the EU are wrong, a spokesman told The Guardian, “The commission have now amended their import rules, without scientific or technical justification. Effectively, they have changed the law to justify their position in blocking the trade, causing impacts for businesses on both sides.”

Still, when the case gets referred on appeal from the The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to a bloke in Bradford I am sure all will be well - assuming any of the shell fish businesses are still going.  However, being an old-fashioned believer in experts, my money is still on EU Commissioner Stella Kyriakides as I explained HERE.

I note this morning North is talking about Nova Dog Chews in Ayrshire who are joining the great exodus of UK businesses into the EU, France in their case. He says this represents a "success story" because they will continue to manufacture in Scotland.

I would not be too sure. I think a lot of British companies who move distribution into the EU will be pleasantly surprised by a lot of things. The widespread use of English is one but the work ethic is another. The French company I worked for would have office staff at their desks and working by 8:30 sharp and they didn't spend half the morning chatting about the night before or flicking through social media. The were serious.

The use of EU workers in agriculture wouldn't have been so attractive without that work ethic let's face it.

So, having set up a distribution hub UK companies will find the paperwork a bit easier - with less of it because sending large single loads is better than small consignments going groupage - but there is still extra cost associated with crossing borders.  The moment that local manufacturing looks cheaper than shipping goods in, that is what will happen.

A Rubicon is being crossed for a lot of companies and the local enterprise organisations in EU member states will be encouraging UK companies to expand their operations. The relaxed lifestyle and excellent food in France is just a bonus.  I wouldn't be as confident as Dr North that Nova Dog Chews (and plenty of others) will just have a distribution hub after five years. Many will have manufacturing as well.

Now, an apology. I missed an article by Phillip Stephens in the FT in January: From Suez to Brexit and back again: Britain’s long search for a role

It's longish and behind a paywall but if you have a subscription, well worth a read.  The first part is about a civil servant in Attlees's 1945 Labour government, Henry Tizard.

"In the summer of 1945, the nation had poured into the streets to celebrate the great victory over Hitler’s Nazis. Four years later, as it counted the cost of victory with continuing food rationing and recurring financial crises, Tizard saw a yawning gap between exalted ambition and diminished circumstance. Britain was behaving, he wrote in a Whitehall minute, as if it were still a great power. The world had changed.

"Hitler’s defeat had marked the end of the Pax Britannica. Great power relations had been reframed by the contest between the US and the Soviet Union. Britain had fallen into the second tier."

Tizard wrote a Whitehall minute in which he said:

“We are not a great power and never will be again. We are a great nation, but if we continue to behave like a great power we shall soon cease to be a great nation.”

In the article there is this fascinating graph:

It shows the % trade done with the US (blue line) and with the old empire (red line) as a % of our European trade. Note that apart from two world wars, Europe has dominated our trade for 150 years or more.  In recent times it has increased so that trade with the US and with commonwealth countries together only equal about half of our trade with Europe.

What Brexit is trying to do is roll back the clock to a time that never existed. European trade always has and always will dominate because of geography and culture. The single market ha sonly increased its dominance.

The FT piece runs through recent history and sets out our relative decline.

"Soon after the retreat from Suez, Anthony Eden had jotted down some private reflections. The significance, he concluded, was not so much that the debacle had rewritten the future but that it had revealed the harsh realities of relative decline. Brexit demands the same sort of reckoning." 

Stephens says, "Brexiters have long confused sovereignty with power. The notional sovereignty now reclaimed from Brussels does not confer a capacity to act. Instead, Britain has lost its voice in European affairs and diminished its influence in Washington."

He says Britain's soft power — the language, history and creativity still count —  and might make a difference but that demands the realism and insight shown by Tizard more than 70 years ago.  He ends with this:

"The days of great power posturing have passed. As for Europe, history as well as geography and geopolitics tells us that sooner or later Britain will be drawn back to its own continent."

I think he's right.