How a betting business saved Stoke-on-Trent

I wrote last week of my fear that we’ll never ‘take back control of our fish’, as Brexiteers ardently wish, because the rights of UK fishermen — whose diminished industry contributes less than half a per cent of GDP — will be too easy to give away in the next negotiating phase. Sure enough, last Sunday’s Brussels summit to approve the withdrawal agreement produced an explicit warning from President Emmanuel Macron that unless the UK allows continuing access into its waters for EU (meaning specifically French) fishing boats, he may veto a wider trade deal, which means the hated ‘backstop’ would come into force instead.

That’s quite a threat, reflecting both Macron’s urgent need to deflect rising hostility towards him at home, seen in violent fuel tax protests, and the fact that a third of the catch of France’s northern fishing fleet comes from UK waters. What’s less well known about this battlefront is just how enfeebled our British forces are, after decades of attrition under the Common Fisheries Policy.