Wrecking the Brexit talks won’t help our fishermen

‘Every country has a political problem with its fishermen,’ wrote Peter Walker, the Conservative minister who negotiated the first effective EU-UK fishing deal in 1983. ‘Everyone sympathises with the tough life they lead. They all want to take as much fish as they can.’ And here’s Michel Barnier, still speaking as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator in Dublin last week despite rumours he’s about to be sidelined: ‘Without a long-term, fair and sustainable solution on fisheries, there will simply be no new economic partnership with the UK.’

Those quotes encapsulate the bizarre fact that an industry which contributes just £1.4 billion to UK GDP stands, alongside the Northern Ireland border issue, as a last obstacle to a sensible Brexit divorce. More than half the catch in UK waters is taken by non-UK vessels — claiming ancient rights that pre-date the EU — and more than half of EU fish quotas for England and Wales have been sold to foreign operators, while most of the fish we eat is imported and most of what we still catch is exported to Europe.