[theo_luddite]

Sing when we're fishing, we only sing when we're fishing.

So, Bodgit can't get the easiest trade deal done ever because of some trivial thing with fishing (bear with me) and his mates want to make the rules up on who they choose to subsidise in order to boost our sales into the EU.

The fishing thing is a stinking pile of herring, not just a red herring.

In 2019, UK vessels landed 622 thousand tonnes of sea fish with a value of £987 million. Compared to 2018, this is a reduction of 11 per cent and 2 per cent in quantity and value respectively.

The UK is a net importer of fish, with imports exceeding exports. The UK’s trade gap in 2019 for sea fish is 270 thousand tonnes.

In 2019, the UK imported 721 thousand tonnes of sea fish, with a value of £3,457 million. It exported 452 thousand tonnes with a value of £2,004 million.

So we export 73% of what we catch - to the EU - and we import more than we catch anyway. This will now all have import/export taxes added so, we'll lose out (net) on that one.

A huge chunk of imported fish tonnage is farmed salmon - which also get's lumped into the fresh water fish catch. I take it our trawlers just can't wait to start circling the UK salmon farms to keep them out of Johnny Foreigners nets.

What am I missing here that is a problem to a trade deal?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fishi...-published

Fleet
In 2019, there were 5,911 UK registered fishing vessels. There are around 12,000 fishers working on UK registered vessels. This has been stable for the past decade.

Almost 80 per cent of the UK fleet is made up of vessels of 10 metres and under in length. Vessels over 24 metres in length account for just 4 per cent of the total number (236) but for three fifths of total capacity and a third of total power.

In the mean time, we're spoiling for a fight by telling the Navy to have a go at any fishing boat leaving a French/Spanish port and sailing more than halfway across the Channel. Great way to win friends and influence people. I take it any fish found on board will be wearing a flag of the nation in whose waters they were caught to make them easy to identify.