December 13, 2021 - 4:41pm
Some wars end with a parade. Others fizzle out and no-one claims victory.
The latter appears to be the outcome of the great Anglo-French Fish War of 2021 after a limited breakthrough in talks in Brussels on Saturday.
Some French fishermen, like isolated Japanese soldiers post-1945, are saying they will fight on. They warn of blockades of the Channel Ports in the next week or so. It remains to be seen if that threat will come to anything. My guess is “not very much”.
Britain and Jersey granted an extra 23 fishing licences to French boats for inshore English and Jersey waters on Saturday. Another seven permits are expected to be approved today. This will bring concessions to the French to 80 in the last week. Only 74 out of 377 licences requested by France are still being refused. In theory, talks on those missing licences will continue.
As a result, France yesterday quietly dropped its demand for EU retaliatory trade action against Britain. The European Commission told Paris, in effect: “Soyez sérieux” (Get serious). Obviously, the bloc sees no need to involved itself in a trade war over 74 licences for which there has been marked progress.
So who won and who lost?
On the whole the French have won if you compare the final figures (74 missing licences) to those in May when hostilities began (more than 200 missing licenses). But not all French fishermen — especially those in northern France — see it that way.
They say that they will organise in the next few days blockades of Channel ports and the Channel Tunnel, which briefly disrupted UK-EU truck traffic last month.
The dispute concerned a tiny part of a small industry — the rights of Norman and Breton boats to fish between six and 12 miles of the Channel Islands and the rights of boats from the Pas de Calais to fish a similar distance from the English coast
There was always something absurd about such a small issue causing such a large row between two big, neighbouring allies — even allies as quarrelsome as France and Britain. But fish politics are bigger than fish economics in both countries.
For a handful of French fishermen, inshore access rights are a matter of economic life and death.
For the British and Jersey governments, the dispute was, depending on who you listened to: a) a matter of principle to protect fragile fish stocks or b) a chance to stick it to the French post-Brexit.
Throughout this saga, the other Channel Islands government, Guernsey, has been much more pragmatic. It issued temporary licences, most of which it replaced with permanent ones a few days ago.
The post-Brexit treaty failed to say what proofs of past access were needed. Britain and Jersey devised their own, which the French insisted were unfair.
The weekend breakthrough came after the UK and Jersey agreed to take a more flexible approach to the rights of “replacement boats”. London had protested that they were often bigger and more powerful than the old ones.
The UK government has now accepted that some were bigger because they had more modern facilities — like toilets and bathrooms. So it all turned on water and “loos” — this time in France’s favour.
There will be no victory parades. Negotiations will drag on below the radar for weeks. Of the many Franco-British quarrels of 2021, the fish war is the one least likely to re-surface in 2022. But a quarrel which could have been solved months ago has unnecessarily deepened the distrust between the present French and British governments.
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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SubscribeThe likelihood is that China will absorb/invade Taiwan sometime in the next ten years and that the US will accept it as a fait sccomplt.
I believe that Trump’s trying to shift the balance of power away from multipolarity to a dual consensus between China and the US – cutting Russia out of the picture entirely, raiding its resources and reducing it to a stub of its former imperial grandeur. Note that after demanding a ridiculous amount of Ukraine’s natural resources (and if anyone took that seriously, ditto Canada and Greenland being annexed to the US, I have some rocking horse faeces to show you), Russia leapt forward eagerly and offered their rare earth minerals to Trump? Putin has destroyed Russia: its manpower is significantly reduced (they’ve been deploying medics to the frontline, for heaven’s sake, still using that Tsar Alexander I habit of throwing wave after wave of whom they see as expendable bodies); its economy, off a war footing, in tatters; its people miserable and betrayed; its allies subdued or withdrawing; its goods sanctioned; its imperial dreams crushed. Whom can Russia turn to – the global south? Yes, of course, they orchestrate coups and military operations to shore up allegiance to Moscow; but China is heavily embedding itself around the world, its global supply chain without a single weak link. All these posturing speeches from Trump, Rubio, Musk et al seem like the opening gambit of a massive deal to be made – and China is on the ascent, despite economic turbulence. Just my opinion, naturally, but I think the Cold War is finally drawing to a close.
Amazing how many people actually want war with China and/or Russia. You should all go talk to some combat veterans before you agitate for something you don’t really understand.
I would much rather see the three of them sitting, drinking tea and talking for as long as they want. Pretty soon they’ll start talking about women or golf or whatever, and forget about all this war nonsense.
The perspective from which an article is written is not only significant but also deeply misleading. This piece frames the U.S. as negotiating from a position of strength over China, when in reality, the opposite is true. China is supplying critical components for the very weapons the U.S. is sending to Ukraine while simultaneously providing weapon parts to Russia. In effect, China has assumed the role the U.S. once held—serving as a key supplier in a major conflict.
The U.S. does not need to end the war in Ukraine because it wants to; it must do so because it has no choice. The country is increasingly dependent on Chinese manufacturing, while China continues to support both sides of the conflict. As a result, the U.S. finds itself in the paradoxical position of fueling China’s economy while depleting its own resources for a war of questionable strategic value.
Adding insult to injury, the notion that China’s economy is ‘stagnant’ is laughable. The assumption that sanctions against select Chinese entities would cripple their economy is based on wishful thinking rather than reality. The evidence clearly tells a different story.
A nuanced understanding of global power dynamics is essential, especially when mainstream narratives fail to capture the shifting balance of influence.
Of course Trump and Xi want to sort out Ukraine asap. Trump wants the USA to make money from their surrender, and China want to ratchet down from opposition to occupying an independent sovereign nation (as indeed does Trump). Both of them want to be pals with Putin. Dictators together with similar aims – never mind the actual people, they are just disposable pawns to money and power for the old men.
Why just China? India, Indonesia, Brazil, UAE, Saudi Arabia- in fact most of the non Western world has long called for an end to the war. Higher food and fuel prices affect all.
Only Neo Cons and MIC fattened lobbies who don’t care for the hardships of everyday life; and whose slush money profits increase with war have called for its continuance.
“Only Neo Cons and MIC fattened lobbies who don’t care for the hardships of everyday life; and whose slush money profits increase with war have called for its continuance.”
Also dumb European leaders who, having dug themselves into a hole with ‘whatever it takes’ commitments to Zelensky now have no idea how to stop digging (let alone get themselves out of said hole).
Interesting to think of the China angle to the Ukraine war. Ukraine, Russia, the US, the EU, the UK, NATO, China, etc. Lots of variables to consider all interrelated in complex ways.
A war like this one does affect the rest of the world. We in the US should be careful not to treat other countries as adversaries unless we are at war with them. We gain nothing by standing on ideology rather than pragmatism.
Speaking of China, I wonder how the sale of TikTok is going. Donald Trump put in place a 75-day stay. Half that time has gone, but nothing seems to be happening.
One things for sure, these are not the boring times of Joe Biden. TikTok may have stopped ticking, but there are plenty of other bombs on a short fuse that need to be defused. Exciting times.