…Britain loses
So, following the Government’s negotiations we have now agreed to give up our sovereignty of over the British Indian Ocean Territories, which are vital to national security, handing them to Mauritius, a country with strengthening ties to China and Russia, and then to lease them back for £9 billion. What sort of Madness is this?
Also announced this week is the Prime Minister’s ‘reset’ agreement with the European Union. This was the scheduled 5-year review of the terms on which we left the EU. It ought to have presented an opportunity for UK and Europe to benefit from amended terms to mutual benefit.
We started with a huge advantage: our fish.
For whatever reason, access to UK fishing waters has always been a top priority for the EU. Even when we were negotiating to join the Common Market back in 1970-71, when they had no common fisheries policy, they cobbled it together, at the last minute, making it the price of our joining.
Knowing, that fishing in UK waters was so important to them, we should have made it the first item to be agreed, and as such, the price of everything else that we were seeking. Instead, the Government repeated the earlier mistake of seeking agreements on other items first, only to be threatened at the, last minute. with complete collapse, unless their demand for fishing concessions be met.
The Prime Minister told the Commons that, having reached agreement, he rushed straight to Lidl, to be told by staff that they were ‘delighted’.
I have no idea what he told Lidl that they would be getting, because there is no detail in the agreement at all. Indeed, it is a set of agreements, rather than being an agreement. And these agreements are merely to meet again and thrash out exactly what it is that we are agreeing to.
The PM could give no implementation date, precisely because all the details are still to be negotiated.
What we do know is that we have agreed to give EU boats continued rights to fish in our waters for the next 12 years. So, with all the details yet to be hammered out, we have already conceded our principal bargaining chip.
Indeed, its worse, from this year forward, there was to have been an annual negotiation of the extent of EU access to our waters: Every year we would have had negotiating leverage to secure desirable concessions. Instead, we’ve forgone 12 years of bargaining power.
All that we do know is that we will be subject to rules made elsewhere, that we will have to pay, but we don’t know how much.
What a rip-off