I also think that the EU would also be far better off for having the means to prevent UK criminals from entry.
I’ve dealt with any number of offenders, mainly dealers who intended to move over to Holland and Germany in the hope of evading observation, hell I even know of one individual who took a Spanish language distance learning course - did the exams in prison and absconded when he was transferred to open prison conditions - have a guess where he went.
I don’t think that anyone has pointed out that there WAS a grace period, and it was 1 year long. The UK actually exited EU in January of 2020. At that time there was a 1 year grace period to negotiate the terms of withdrawal, but the withdrawal had already happened. The fact that Her Majesty’s Government made a dog’s breakfast of the negotiations and preparations for the end of the grace period is on nobody other than Her Majesty’s Government. Given the performance over the past four years it is pretty clear to this outside observer that a grace period of a hundred years would not have been long enough to avoid chaos.
11 months. But, yeah.
The SNP’s Brexit spokesperson, Philippa Whitford, said: “Due to Brexit-induced bureaucracy, Scotland’s fishing communities are already experiencing severe disruption and cannot get their produce to their customers in the EU market on time.
“For the Tory government’s fisheries minister to then admit that she did not even bother to read the details of the damaging deal because she was too busy is unbelievable and makes her position untenable.”
That’s been around since Cameron first raised it 15 years ago. Then and now and all the years between, there’s little or no sign of even a back-of-an-envelope outline of what they think it might contain. Yes, it would be a significant consumer of parliamentary and legal time to pass it into law and practice, but it would be a more convincing suggestion if there were some evidence of thought having gone into it since 2005, beyond a slogan to keep the Express/Mail/Telegraph/Sun readers on-side.
It’s not often I agree with any statement by an SNP politician, but this does seem inexcusable.
This, God this.
I live in Sweden. I’ve lived here long enough that I didn’t even get a vote in the referendum, never mind voting remain. Now any interaction I do with my home country has layers of red tape and costs. People are being charged customs fees (not VAT, customs fees) at a flat 75 SEK/package for things from Amazon now.
I used to stock up on home comforts every time I went back to the UK. Many of those things I am no longer allowed to bring with me. My only option now is to buy them online at heavily marked up prices, plus delivery costs and the inevitable customs fees.
And that’s not forgetting I had to change my actual citizenship status just to make sure I could remain living where I was. Because that shit was all left to the last minute as well.
This. There seems to have been a collective denial up to the highest level of policymakers to even acknowledge the fact that Brexit has consequences. That, or willful ignorance combined with utter laziness.
In this particular case, Brexit is of course irrelevant, as noted above, but it is all of a par.
Something to do with it being Christmas Eve and family commitments? Sounds as if much of the work was done by civil servants at the last minute and the high standards of political oversight that such an important document merited were simply not met. But, of course, they can’t say that. Criticising the timetable would be to criticise the boss.
Could it be that releasing such an important document at a time when the people who have to scrutinise it will inevitably be distracted was part of the plan?
Get Brexit done! This means give the Brexit faction what they want in terms of sovereignty positions in the document such that they don’t turn on Boris and call him out as a traitor to the cause.
If the implications are that some businesses will suffer by being exposed to a sudden high levels of import/export bureaucracy disrupting a carefully built up supply chain?
Well…they will get over it…in time. In any case the fishing industry were VERY keen on Brexit and surely they will understand that it is for their long term benefit. The phasing out of the EU fishing quota system, that the small operators hate so much, is a surely progress?
However, it is a brave politician who tries to explain that to angry Scottish fishermen that they cannot have their cake and eat it.
I think there are going to be many examples of this as the holes in the UK-EU deal begin to become clear.
The UK paid £10B a year to be in the EU and got a range of benefits for that. I always considered that to a bargain. Now the UK is out of the EU club, the benefits stop and the businesses that have built supply chains on top of frictionless trade with the EU now have to change their business model.
It is the smaller operators who are unprepared for this. They will make a lot of noise, but while the Brexit faction and sections of the media were very keen to champion their cause when it co-included with the Brexit cause. Now, their concerns will be quietly forgotten. They were useful idiots, pawns in a bigger game. The big operators that control the bulk of the UK fishing industry will be compensated. They have influence, these little companies selling lobsters to the French? Not so much.
It will be interesting to see how the government is prepared to defend its position as these Brexit issues start emerging.
The Christmas tree defence presumably claiming family commitments are more important than an important treaty and matter of state? Weak!
The government will surround itself with a sacrificial picket of junior minister fall guys. This seems to be one if them. An open goal for the SNP. I expect Starmer and Labour will be looking for similar holes and scalps. But the government can always announce some compensation scheme to get themselves off the hook.
All this is being hidden behind the big COVID emergency. I seem to remember a leaked memo from a government advisor during another big emergency some years ago. ‘This is a good time to hide bad news’.
With everyone distracted by the COVID pandemic and the Christmas break, the government got this flaky deal through without much scrutiny. The fallout, too may be drowned out by COVID stories for many weeks to come.
I guess it will start becoming an issue once the UK turns its attention to the economic crisis that is looming.
This research paper says that before the referendum 93% of Scottish fishermen said they would vote for Brexit.
A survey of Scottish fishermen ahead of Brexit: political, social and constitutional attitudes
An overwhelming majority stated that they intended to vote to leave the EU. Further examination found that their reasoning was very much instrumental in that they believe that leaving the EU and the CFP will benefit their industry.
There was very little evidence that issues driving the vote choice of many leave voters in the UK, such immigration, were driving their decision to vote leave. Fishermen, on the whole, appear to have made a carefully calculated and rational judgement to vote leave based on their negative perceptions of the CFP and its impact on their industry.
It looks like their “carefully calculated and rational judgement” was dead wrong. They can’t say they didn’t bring this on themselves.
Not enough to keep the Kirkella working. You know, the single trawler that supplies 12 per cent of all fish sold in British chippies. It’s not just small operators feeling the pinch.
Prawns, surely? 
To be fair, their complaint isn’t that Brexit happened in the first place, it’s that Westminster has fucked up the follow-through. Which, yeah, I know, didn’t take a crystal ball…
Jo Moore, an aide to the (then) Transport Secretary Stephen Byers [Labour] suggested the September 11 attacks were a good day to bury bad news… Can’t remember the news they were hoping to bury but it takes a special kind of cynic to make that suggestion.
ETA: Surprised myself remembering her name but interest was piqued so went to check.
She wasn’t trying to bury anything in specific but circulated an email making the ‘Good day to bury…’ suggestion. It took here until sometime in 2002 to actually resign.
There’s a longstanding tradition of releasing bad or embarrassing political news on a Friday afternoon or a Friday evening. A bank holiday weekend is especially useful for this.
The problem is not so much that they fucked up, but that no solution exists that will allow them to have their cake and eat it.
If they set up a barrier that excludes the EU from fishing in British waters, that same barrier will stop them exporting fish frictionlessly to the EU.
Yes, it’s that complicated principle of international trade that has confounded so many: “You’re in, or you’re out.”
The Kirkella spends most of its time in the Barents Sea controlled by Norway. The UK has access to this fishing ground by a quota agreement between Norway and the EU.
No EU, no quota. Unless the UK negotiates a deal directly with Norway.
A government spokesperson said: “As an independent coastal state the UK has put in place new arrangements to further influence the management of near and distant fish stocks, to best serve the interests of the British fishing industry.
“Negotiations for fishing opportunities in 2021 will be concluded as soon as possible.”
I guess this is on the Brexit teams ‘To Do’ list.
Just to add a bit of personal anecdote, customs officers in New Zealand inspected the bottoms of my boots for illicit dirt, when I flew in from the U.S. So did the Aussies. Their strictness over biocontrols is about protecting unique island habitats; they weren’t attempting to bolster up their dirt industries.
Another couple complicated principles that amateurs don’t really seem to understand:
In a negotiation with a more-or-less equal, you don’t get 100% of what you want while giving the counterparty zero % of what they want. Darth Vader can pull that shit (at least in the first reel) but even he gets hammered before the credits roll.
How bad you want it is not related in any way to your actual bargaining power to get it.