Next year, we were getting our fisheries back under Brexit. Starmer wasn't having that
There's a lot of bad stuff in Keir Starmer's sellout deal with the EU, but among the worst is the extension of the fisheries transition period by an incredible twelve years, to 2038, more than double the length of the original transition Boris Johnson and I reluctantly accepted in 2020.
Starmer tries to claim this provides 'stability'. This is not just a misunderstanding, it is actively misleading. To understand why, you have to look back.
Fisheries was the last part of the 2020 agreement to be finalised, at 3pm on Christmas Eve. The EU side had given us inaccurate quota numbers, deliberately miscalculated Euro/Sterling exchange rates, and refused to back off, almost collapsing the entire agreement at the last moment. Fortunately, they saw sense, we redid the numbers, and the agreement gave us most of what we wanted.
The deal made Britain an independent coastal state once again. (The great Charles Moore says it didn't in his Monday column: I hate to correct him, but even Homer nods, and the Treaty is clear: 'with effect from 1 January 2021, the United Kingdom is an independent coastal State with corresponding rights and obligations under international law.') We left the dreadful Common Fisheries Policy which set catches and quotas by majority vote and which had nearly destroyed North Sea fishing grounds. We got back the right to manage the environment in our own waters. EU fishing boats needed access licences and only got them on certain conditions. It would be back to normal.
Finally, and most importantly, we got back the right to agree annual catches and annual quotas with our neighbours. Because the Common Fisheries Policy was heavily biased against UK fisheries from the beginning (indeed, in the last years before Brexit, EU boats caught five times more fish by value in our waters than we did) it was inevitable that they would rapidly produce a significant further increase in UK catch. If that couldn't be agreed collaboratively, well, we could always close some or all of our waters to anyone other than Brits. That might mean some sort of retaliation, but that was a trade-off we could decide for ourselves.
The only problem was that we had to agree a transition to these annual negotiations, of five and a half years. During it, the 2020 quotas would be uplifted in our favour by 25 per cent, but would otherwise be fixed. On 1 July 2026, all this would be over. Reluctantly, we thought this justifiable in the interests of securing the wider trade agreement and avoiding a further shock to the economy in the depths of pandemic misery that dreadful Christmas.
Our fisheries industry in general wanted a shorter transition and higher quotas sooner. I don't blame them, though I do think their disappointment led them to exaggerate the criticism. After all, in 2023 (the latest full figures available) UK vessels landed 14 per cent more fish than in 2019. That it was a deal in our favour is shown by the fact the French hated it, posturing and grumbling from the beginning, and threatening to blockade Jersey and cut off electricity supplies in that first autumn in an attempt to evade its terms.
Be that as it may, whatever you thought of the transition, it is, or was, almost over. In a year and a month we would be exactly like any other fishing nation. But no. Starmer's deal has extended it for another 12 years. Starmer is trying to claim that because this is our 2020 deal there should be no difficulty in extending it. That is absurd. The point of our transition was that it ended.
Suppose you get divorced and agree to pay your spouse maintenance for five years. You're not going to be happy if you are suddenly told you have to pay it for another twelve, and that it really shouldn't be a problem for you because, after all, it's only the same amount you originally agreed. It's a massive change to terms and expectations. The money you thought you had available you no longer have. Everything is different.
So it is for fishing communities on the back of Starmer's wretched deal. Many fishermen will now never see the quota increases they could have expected. Some will have invested in that expectation and now see that undermined. And why will anyone put in money in future when it's already clear there is no prospect of increasing the size of the market?
This time our fishing communities really have been sold out. Our deal may not have been perfect, but at least we got the biggest, widest, and deepest trade agreement ever in return. What has Starmer got? The right to subject ourselves to EU laws and courts in perpetuity. He's conceded one thing we don't want to get something else we don't want.
This farcical reset does nothing but take us back closer to EU control, and our fishermen are its victims.
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