Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

We were never going to take back control of our fishing waters

My decision to vote Remain was driven in part by an exercise in which I tried to identify anyone close to me in Yorkshire — family, neighbour, business owner, farmer — who was worse off as a result of UK membership of the EU. The only people uncontestably in that category, I concluded, were the east-coast fishermen whose livelihoods have been eroded by 45 years of punitive quotas and unfair competition. So I felt for them on Monday, when their interests were traded away yet again as part of the Brexit ‘transition’.

Instead of being released from the Common Fisheries Policy in March 2019, as Environment Secretary Michael Gove proclaimed barely a week ago, our diminished fleet is stuck with the status quo until the end of 2020. Worse, the reversal represented by Monday’s ‘breakthrough’ deal was a blunt reminder that prospects for a happier fishing future look as poor as they ever did.

The problem in a cockleshell is that we simply don’t eat what we catch, or catch what we eat. A high proportion of fish and seafood from British boats is exported to the EU, while much of the cod and haddock we like to eat is imported from Nordic countries. So we seriously need tariff-free trade, for which the negotiating price demanded will be — guess what — continuing quota and access agreements that look very like the present regime. If that was always going to be so, what campaign slogan was emptier than ‘taking back control of our waters’?

Skiing for a better NHS

To Méribel in the Alps for the Coeur Blanc, a biennial charity event that bears no resemblance to the Presidents Club dinner — and for which I edit a souvenir magazine. While I lunched long at the Bistrot de l’Orée (‘More restaurant tips please,’ chorused readers I met during the weekend), fitter skiers completed a challenge that raised more than £250,000 for a medical cause called ‘MyC’.

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