Boris Johnson has allowed himself to be snookered by the EU

The UK-EU trade negotiations have heated up again, albeit from a very cold state. Boris seems to have conceded ground on the ‘evolution clause’ to the European Union, making a path to an agreement on the level playing field issues at least plausible. The UK has accepted that divergence should come at some cost — although the details of how that cost should be managed appear to still be a live issue. With that comes the last hurdle: fishing.

Boris Johnson has allowed himself to be snookered by the EU. More than anything else I could point to, leaving fishing to the very end demonstrates the folly of Johnson’s overall negotiating strategy.

Johnson should have prioritised fish from the start. Remainers like to go on about how small the fishing industry is economically, but this is again to confuse Brexit as principally an economic argument.