Casting Off: The UK’s Global Agenda will Need to Drop the Fish

Walk down the streets of London and you’ll find just as many fish and chips vendors as corner pubs. Fish and chips is more than just the United Kingdom’s favorite comfort food. The fish component of the dynamic duo holds particular importance when it comes to the expression of British sovereignty and the past four years of painfully slow disengagement from the European continent. On December 24th, the United Kingdom and the EU reached a buzzer-beater Brexit deal, terminating an economically and politically damaging process. And the hold up? Among a couple of other issues were disputes over European access to British coastal fisheries previously in the EU single market. Now apart from the EU, as the United Kingdom “goes global”—charting its own course creating a world where it plays a larger role—it must leave behind fixations on parochial and nationalistic issues, such as fisheries, that only serve as thank you notes to pro-Brexit voters and roadblocks to Britain’s emergence as a global leader separate from the multinational bloc. 

It’s All About the Fish

Fishing accounts for a tiny fraction of the British economy. Just 12,000 Britons make up the entire population of commercial fishermen, contributing less than one percent of GDP. In exports to the EU, which account for 40 percent of total British exports, fishing makes up just a third of one percent. At first it would seem perplexing and economically irrational for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to hold up the Brexit negotiations—almost abandoning them altogether—to defend the vitality of a negligible industry while endangering the other 99 percent-and-change of the British economy. But emotions, not economic rationality, were always at the heart of the Brexit referendum. 

After the trade deal was signed, Johnson announced that, “the British people [had] voted to take back control of their money, their borders, their laws and their waters and to leave the European Union.”  The prime minister made no error mentioning aspects of regained national sovereignty before ending the list with what was actually on the ticket. Reclaiming “their waters,” referring to fisheries, was always a part of Brexiteers’ rationale for leaving the bloc. This meant that the United Kingdom would be free of EU regulations that set quotas and give access to EU vessels. 

For centuries the United Kingdom has fought with its littoral neighbors over fishing rights in the North Sea. Should every nation have free access to the sea? Or, can they close off their portion to other nations? It is the debate of Mare liberum (open sea) versus Mare clausum (closed sea). The United Kingdom has historically taken the Mare clausum side, which means taking what’s yours and keeping everyone else out.

As such, fishing carries great national symbolic weight for the United Kingdom. This goes for other European countries too. Norwegians, who twice voted not to join the EU, did so in part because they believed it would hurt their fishing industries. Similarly, Iceland clashed with the EU over fisheries, ending accession talks in 2013. For these Nordics, maintaining a tradition of fishing untethered to supranational oversight outweighs the benefits of full EU membership. 

Surely there is a case to be made that the symbolism alone of repatriating the fishing industry makes up for the economic insignificance. Brexiteers set out to reclaim national sovereignty despite a roughly 6.2 percent drop in GDP. Sovereignty means that London has, “supreme authority within [its] territory.” As such, if Johnson and Brexiteers want to protect a tiny industry and population, so be it. Afterall, protecting every last citizen is the core function of the state. But the fact that this consideration was among the very last items hashed out during the Brexit negotiations, settled after far more complex and important issues, demonstrates that  Johnson is out of touch with the realities of global trade and international relations of the day. 

If a goal of Brexit was to revive the fishing industry, to uplift fishing communities that were “left behind” by globalization and almost 50 years of UK membership in the various European communities, that goal is a nonstarter. Technology and overfishing are the reasons for the plight of British fishing—not the EU—and most fishing jobs in the United Kingdom were gone before joining the EU—there is hardly anything to revive. The United Kingdom will actually lose more from new tariffs and non-tariff barriers than it will bring in from its Mare clausum. Its fish processing industry will also suffer from more restricted trade with the EU.

Things have already gotten worse for the fishing industry since the trade deal was signed last month. Because of Brexit, Scottish seafood exporters can’t sell into the EU market because intermediators have no guarantee that their stock will be able to clear customs. Some exporters are even being rejected because of paperwork completed using the wrong color ink. For one Scottish seafood company, that meant a usual week’s £1 million ($1.35 million) sale to the EU went for a meager £12,000 ($16,200). To add to the scourge, Fisheries Minister Victoria Prentis faced calls to step down when she admitted that she failed to read the trade deal due to preoccupations with Christmas festivities. 

For Downing Street to hold Brexit negotiations hostage in part because of fisheries disputes, and then fail to smooth the transition for its championed industry, is a national embarrassment. It undermines the same sovereignty that Johnson and the Leave campaign promised to restore. 

Britain Goes Global

Now outside the EU, the United Kingdom will re-examine its foreign policy and set its own global agenda. Number 10 is set to release a document outlining this grand strategy, called “The Integrated Review of Security, Defense, Development and Foreign policy” or “Integrated Review” for short. Johnson, who holds a Churchillian view of Britain as a “world-beating” force, will produce a heavily strategic document that will take into account the threats posed by China and Russia. It will address Britain’s unique new position: being able to lead like-minded democracies to address the world’s most urgent challenges. Simon Fraser, a former British diplomat, commented that, “the next chapter of world affairs will be about the political, economic, regulatory, technological and military interplay between the US, China and Europe… the task for the UK is finding our place in this.” But it cannot find that place when it looks inward. 

While fishing strained relations with the EU, other inward-looking issues hurt British credibility with the United States, when a UK minister admitted an internal market bill on Northern Ireland would violate international law in a “limited way.” This prompted Speaker Nancy Pelosi to quickly fire back, stating there would be “absolutely no chance” of a trade deal with the United States under this condition. “How can the government reassure future international partners that the UK can be trusted to abide by the legal obligations of the agreements it signs?” asked Theresa May, pointedly. 

Boris Johnson has carte blanche to set the United Kingdom’s foreign agenda for decades to come. If he wants to do this effectively, he must put the trauma of Brexit behind and abandon the, “outdated notions of sovereignty above the reality of 21st-century trade.” The United Kingdom holds the high cards: leadership of this year’s COP26, a recent $21.9 billion increase in defense spending, a coronavirus vaccine, a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, and a nuclear arsenal. Let it use these assets to debut its new look.