So we wait with bated breath while the final negotiations take place on the Brexit Trade Deal.
My prediction? They will fail. Even if 'something' is cobbled-together in the last five minutes and hailed as The Breakthrough, it'll be such a bad compromise that it won't appeal to the British Parliament (for having given too much away), nor will the twenty-seven EU member states like it (for having given too much away), and it will not hold.
It was thus many months ago: the same sticking-points, the same red lines. One really wonders what on earth the negotiators find to talk about for so many hours on end - indeed, for so many long days at a time - if all they are doing is chewing over the same three issues: government subsidies that might give an advantage to British exporters and undermine EU competitors; rights to fishing grounds within UK waters; and who is to arbitrate if there is a trade dispute.
The curiosity among those three is the rights to fishing grounds.
On the face of it, it seems uncontroversial and natural to say that the sea around the UK coastline is part of UK territory, and that the UK (and only the UK) has the right to say who should be fishing there. But no doubt it is not quite so straightforward. There may be some International Maritime Law that says something about access. And specifically in relation to the English Channel (or La Manche, if contemplating it from the French coast), the territorial waters of England and France come very close to each other - and effectively overlap - in the Straits of Dover. In any case, the French attitude seems at least partly based on having traditional rights to fish in UK waters, something not to be foregone.
But have they consulted the fish? What are they going to do? There is no such thing as a 'British fish' in the sense of one being somehow identifiably 'British'. The fish themselves don't care. They inhabit a different world. They acknowledge no country's sovereignty, and we have no control over them.
Their movements and preferred feeding and mating grounds can alter. In fact, with climate change likely to wreak havoc with their habitats and migration-patterns, all the traditional varieties could be replaced with other kinds of fish, and in consequence the catch will alter as well.
Even if this doesn't happen, the existing fishing grounds may shift unpredictably. What if 'our' fish moved decisively towards the French coast, so that there was nothing worth catching in our waters? Or away from the Channel altogether, to (say) Danish or Norwegian waters?
If that happened, how sick the negotiators would feel about not coming to a Trade Agreement, if fishing rights had been the only point left unresolved.
Well, I'm sure that everything will cost a bit more from 1st January, either on account of the new tariffs, or because goods will have to be shipped from more distant places than Europe. But then, I've been expecting all that for a long time, because it was obvious from the beginning that the EU could never allow the UK to detach itself from Europe without extraordinary trouble and expense. It could not be made easy or advantageous, otherwise some others of the twenty-seven might want to do the same thing.
And in any case, how dare we spoil the European Project! Especially after being the Bad Moody Child for nearly forty years, always arguing, always wanting special treatment, always wanting concessions and rebates. We spurned the Euro as our currency, and we dodged out of taking a proper share of deserving refugees. And then, despite our delinquent behaviour, we have become the Most Desirable Destination for immigrants! Better than anywhere in the EU!
All this must make the top people in the EU very annoyed with the UK. Gott strafe England, indeed.
