May 6, 2021 - 4:00pm
Don’t believe the British press. This is not a new cod war. It is a whelk war. Lobsters, whelks and scallops are the species mostly fished by French boats in the waters around the Isle of Jersey.
To begin to understand the storm which has suddenly blown up in the Gulf of Saint Malo, you need to ask a basic question: why are the French threatening to cut off electricity to Jersey but not to Guernsey or the other Channel Islands?
“The answer is quite simple,” said one senior French regional official. “We have very correct and friendly relations with Guernsey. They play by the friendly rules which have governed relations between Channel Islands and France for centuries. Not on Jersey. There is a new group of leaders there who are fiercely nationalistic and hostile to France.”
“They have dishonestly and unilaterally — and we believe illegally — imposed restrictions on French boats that were not raised during the talks on how fishing here should be organised post-Brexit.”
For centuries, fishing rights around the Channel Islands were governed by bilateral deals between France and the islands. The “Iles Anglo Normandes” are the last part of Duke William’s fiefdom. They are not part of the UK and were never part of the European Union.
But, surprise, surprise, it was agreed on 24 December in the last-minute dash for a post-Brexit trade deal that the islands’12-mile zones would be included in arrangements for continuing access by EU boats to all UK waters. Where deals used to be made locally, everything now had to go through, London, Paris and Brussels.
French and other EU boats could continue to fish up to six miles from the English coast and up to three miles in places around the Channel Islands. Licences would be granted to those boats which had regularly fished those waters in recent years.
This proved complicated to organise (especially with Paris, London and Brussels involved). Boats under 12 metres long don’t have satellite gear to leave a trace of where they have fished. Guernsey agreed to roll over access until June while negotiations continued.
Jersey did the same for small boats but issued licences for 41 bigger French boats, with 17 others pending. When the licences appeared last Friday, they were shot through with unexpected restrictions. Some boats got 170 days of fishing; others a few hours. Boats which fished lobsters were licensed for whelks. Some waters were excluded.
The reaction of the French government — threatening to switch off the 90% of Jersey electricity which comes by cable from Normandy — was vastly over the top. Regional elections are six weeks away; presidential elections 11 months away.
The reaction of the Norman and Breton fishermen — organising a protest flotilla to St Helier — was perfectly normal, for French fishermen.
What happens now? With goodwill, all could be solved in an afternoon. The Jersey government appears shocked by the way things have spiralled out of hand.
But French fishermen’s leaders fear that Boris Johnson’s government is too intoxicated by the stick-it-to-the-French headlines in the UK press to seek an early calming of the waters.
John Lichfield was Paris correspondent of The Independent for 20 years. Half-English and half-Belgian, he was born in Stoke-on-Trent and lives in Normandy.
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SubscribeThis widely proclaimed Polish-Ukrainian friendship has never existed. It’s Realopolitik and who can know better than Polish people what Russians are capable of. Now, with endless and, much too often, unwarranted demand from Zelensky, brought on top of complex historical relationship between Poland and Ukrainian, these cracks started appearing quickly.
It’s pretty clear that the war has settled into a bloody stalemate phase. Everyone knows how it will end. Time to end it.
Long way to go yet, the Russians will end it on their terms
Er, it will be a first then, since WW2.
Russia is no longer a significant power.
All its other adventures since then have gone haywire. Even Putin’s solution to Chechnya just made the latter effectively an independent state, to which Muscovy owes annual tribute, very much as in the days of the Tatar khanate.
And selling oil for nonconvertible Indian rupees is rather less than genius.
“ As the US enters its election season, Ukraine’s quarrel with Poland demonstrates the ease with which a country will choose national interests over international solidarity”.
Re the US- Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy denied Zelinski his request to address the House of Representatives today – 26 Republicans sent a letter demanding to understand how much has already been spent there (the guess is $119BB) and what the end plan is. Zellinski needs jets and they’re finally on the way (being built and Ukraine pilots being trained).
No one seems to be able to estimate how much is enough. If Complete “Victory” means getting the Russians out of Crimea then I agree: we all now how this will end.
If I understand this correctly, the EU Commission let the grain deal collapse to try and damage the Polish conservatives and it backfired in an extremely indirect way.
I met Poles in Krakow who were complaining about house prices.
Ard these the same ones that made so much money in London in the 2000s?
The ‘malaise’ in Poland-Ukraine relations is perhaps being exaggerated. Another interpretation might suggest that it reveals how good Central Europeans, in countries battling a communist legacy, are at doing democratic politics.
Ruling Polish conservatives know how much disgruntlement exists among swing Polish voters. It arises over the volume of refugees from Ukraine and how the war has hugely disrupted daily life in Poland.
Of course, the great majority are on the side of Ukraine but Polish farmers facing insolvency over grain dumping from there won’t meekly embrace destitution.
The election is close and the government has to address those feelings. The fact that there is visible tetchiness in Kyiv toward Ukraine suggests a tango is being performed by two countries whose fate is intertwined.
Kyiv has no wish to see former top Eurocrat Donald Tusk installed as PM. He himself has been engaged in political games, insisting on his anti-Kremlin credentials. But if back in charge in Warsaw, his track-record suggests that he would be content to push into a negotiated peace that will make Ukraine’s options as desperate as Armenia’s currently are, once Russia regroups.
So both allies need to offer a performative display of discord, giving the impression of a big rupture. Zelensky’s call for a UN security seat for Germany merely reinforces the desired impression. He knows the likelihood of this declining and internally troubled country receiving such an accolade is zero. But it wrongfoots the German-owned TV networks in Poland who are eager to install a globalist government there.
As I say, politicians in the land between the rivers Oder and Dnieper are politically savvy. In a bookthat I recently wrote on car crash politics, ‘Europe’s Leadership Famine‘
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Europes-Leadership-Famine-Portraits-1950-2022/dp/0993465447/ref=sr_1_1?crid=ODAXOOBTZE2I&keywords=gallagher+%2B+famine&qid=1695295729&s=books&sprefix=Gallagher+%2B+Fam%2Cstripbooks%2C82&sr=1-1
I deliberately overlooked them because the rot is to be found in Berlin, London, Paris, and Madrid.
But let’s say that the view of many fellow conservatives is correct and that Zelensky is a puppet of globalist forces who is willing to opt for a compromise peace that he and Lavrov will sign, is the true one. Then, I would humbly contend if such a view gained ground at home he would be out of office and denied a renomination even faster than Biden is likely to be!
Hissy fits and walk-outs occurred regularly between Western allies in World War II. I think the Poles and Ukrainians of today are likely to handle them better than Churchill, de Gaulle and Roosevelt did.
The Poles are doing a huge amount of the heavy lifting and are probably tired of doing it alone. Perhaps they’d like a ‘thank you’ once in a while. Mind you, memories of Banderas in 1943 haven’t gone away either.
The whole “91% to 69%” shows you just how much people are incapable of sticking to their principles when push comes to shove.
Similar to democrat voters in New York when faced with direct consequences for voting in pro immigration leaders.
I am suspicious of the motives of any journalist who uses the term “far right.” This usually means the writer is far left but wishes to disguise it.
Poland was able to dump its Soviet-era military surplus on Ukraine, charge the EU for it at replacement cost, and earn kudos from the US for doing so. As Poland has openly stated, their goal was to modernise its military and replace Germany as the US’ go-to ally in Europe. It it well on its way to achieving both objectives,
Everyone in the developing and geopolitically compromised east of Europe is now expected to do the heavy lifting for western Europe and, by extension, the North Atlantic alliances.
This is strikingly different from the liberal interventionism of the Clinton/Blair years but rarely remarked upon in the Western news media. It expresses a monstrous level of moral complacency.
I think this is best seen as posturing for the upcoming Polish election.
Every person in eastern Europe knows the consequences of anything less than full Ukrainian victory: years of a very expensive new Cold War.
It means US and UK troop levels have to go up to that in 1975. It also means much larger defense budgets for every eastern European nation.
For Russia, it means decades of a low level insurgency in whatever part of Ukraine it finally winds up with. Even without outside western support, it took a much larger Soviet Union 10 years to suppress Ukrainian guerrillas.
So it’s in Russia’s very best interests to be defeated in Ukraine.
I m not sure there are enough tough, mentally and physically, teenagers and those in the early twenties in Europe to be able increase troop levels. The British Army is struggling. I would sugest that British teenagers would need six if not twelve months of training to bring them up to the fitness levels of those who volunteered in the early 1970s. What is lacking is, the fortitude, the mental strength to endure pain and hardship with courage.
The terror campaign by the Nazi-remnant Banderistas in mostly western Ukraine was one the US and UK’s most heavily-invested operations, written about by John LeCarré. It was thanks to the information provided by Kim Philby that the Soviets were able to stop their activities.
But of course, they never went away completely, and are now back with a vengeance.