THE GUARDIAN: From horse racing to fishing to road haulage, British industry is in chaos. No wonder leavers are turning on each other
Brexit has beached the fishing boats at Hastings. The two-man crew of Paul Joy’s boat Kaya have left for shore jobs, after the price of the huss they land fell to just 2p a kilo. Exports to the European Union are Brexit-blighted, with fishers across Britain poleaxed by new costs and regulations, their catches rotting before they reach EU markets. It’s costing them millions already.
For the past two years Joy, a passionate Brexiter, has consistently told me he believes his industry would be shafted in any trade deal. “Betrayed, sacrificed,” he says, outraged at the government’s failure to secure British fishing rights for 12 miles around the coast, and now crippled by the export costs. So when foreign secretary Dominic Raab has the effrontery to tell the BBC’s Andrew Marr that this is “a great deal for the fishing industry”, he must know it’s not true.
Other industries want to know if Boris Johnson’s promised “compensation” for fishing losses means a huge subsidy in perpetuity for this less than 0.2% sliver of the economy? Because the problems exploding in one industry after another, in less than three Brexit weeks, are not going away.
Friction is the new normal. As the chief EU negotiator, Michel Barnier said firmly last week, things have “changed for good”. UK choices mean “mechanical, obvious, inevitable consequences when you leave the single market and that’s what the British wished to do”. It’s not French revenge, or bloody-minded Brussels, but ordinary life as a third country. » | Polly Toynbee | Monday, January 18, 2021
