{"id":109758,"date":"2025-05-17T19:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T19:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/109758\/"},"modified":"2025-05-17T19:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T19:13:09","slug":"sell-out-pm-warned-against-capitulating-to-eu-in-brexit-fishing-politics-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/109758\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Sell-out!’ PM warned against ‘capitulating’ to EU in Brexit fishing | Politics | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sir Keir Starmer<\/a> must not \u201csell out\u201d or \u201ccapitulate\u201d to the EU during a UK-EU summit on Monday, MPs and fishermen<\/a> have warned. Shadow Environment<\/a> Secretary Victoria Atkins visited the Isle of Wight ahead of the crunch talks on Monday, where fishermen told her the industry faces extinction without drastic support.<\/p>\n

The senior Tory<\/a> said: \u201cWe have a really big set of negotiations coming up which will involve fishing but also other aspects of our relationship with the EU. We know that the Prime Minister has been discussing what he\u2019s describing as an \u2018EU reset\u2019.<\/a> What we want to ensure as Conservatives<\/a> is that he gets it right and that means not backsliding on the commitments we made when these were first negotiated five years ago, but also very much improving the deal for our fishermen across the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hearing very worrying things and speculation in the papers that Labour is going to capitulate to the EU and give away our fishing rights. We as Conservatives<\/a> will stand firm against that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joe Robertson MP warned his constituents on the isle off the south coast of England fear Sir Keir will \u201cend up with a worse deal\u201d.<\/p>\n

France is said to be pushing for continued access for its trawlers to UK waters, rather than annual talks.<\/p>\n

Fishing terms under the current Brexit<\/a> deal are due to expire in 2026, meaning fresh negotiations were always on the cards.<\/p>\n

Mr Robertson said: \u201cThe worry is, certainly for fishing, we\u2019re going to end up with a worse deal and the Prime Minister\u2019s going to be selling them short. That\u2019s why I\u2019m really concerned and want to put pressure on the Prime Minister to not sell out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britain and the bloc will discuss closer trade alignment when they meet, after the Government said it wanted to strengthen ties with the EU.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir and EU leaders have said they want to see closer defence and security co-operation, and both sides have shown an interest in a youth mobility scheme and aligned farming standards.<\/p>\n

Ed Blake, whose family has fished on the Isle of Wight since the 1830s, called the Brexit<\/a> deal \u201cdisappointing\u201d and \u201cthe death of us as an industry\u201d.<\/p>\n

He told how he and his dad Geoff, 60, are the last full-time fishing boat on the Isle \u2013 a dramatic decline from the up to 70 vessels 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

The skipper said: \u201cAs a fishing industry on the whole, we campaigned hard to leave the EU. We\u2019d been held ransom for years since the 70s when we first entered the Common Fisheries Policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were desperate to get out of [the EU], draw the halfway line across the Channel and basically tell them to \u2018get out our waters\u2019. Since then, we\u2019ve been pretty much sold out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement, the UK and EU have rights of access for fishing in specific parts of each other\u2019s waters between six and 12 nautical miles from the coast, under certain conditions.<\/p>\n

Mr Blake said: \u201cWe\u2019re not allowed 12 miles off their coast but they come up to our six. That\u2019s one anomaly. They\u2019re allowed to catch species we\u2019re not allowed to catch. They\u2019re using huge midwater supertrawlers. My boat is 3.5 tonnes. The boats they\u2019ve got are 3,500 tonnes more. They are hoovering up the ocean. It\u2019s decimated our mackerel fishing. We haven\u2019t seen the benefits of what we thought we\u2019d get.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing. It\u2019s literally been the death of us as an industry. On the island, we\u2019re down to six full-time boats. Thirty years ago we had 60 or 70.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Blake, who is the youngest skipper \u201cby a long way\u201d, with his father the second youngest, warned \u201cwe\u2019re on our knees as an industry\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cThe only benefit that has come from it [Brexit<\/a>] is that we are now not forced into selling fish to the EU.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about Sir Keir\u2019s plans to strengthen ties with the EU, he said: \u201cIt\u2019s a total sell-out. Almost all other countries are looking at bolstering their positions and we\u2019re looking to weaken ourselves for the benefit of others and that\u2019s just mental.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf something drastic doesn’t happen to help us, the industry will be gone. It\u2019ll be extinct. Once you\u2019ve lost that, you don\u2019t get it back.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Ms Atkins was quizzed on the Brexit<\/a> betrayal agreed by the Tories<\/a>, she said: \u201cFirst of all, we did what we said we were going to do, which was to leave the European Union<\/a>, and I think everyone understands that was an enormous constitutional and legal change that we oversaw.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have never pretended that we got everything we wanted to get. That\u2019s the nature of negotiation. But the one thing you can be clear of is that had we still been in government, we\u2019d be going into these negotiations absolutely determined to improve upon what we already have to get a better deal for our fishing communities, to ensure that British farming continues to thrive.<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cWe want to maintain our role as a proud, sovereign island state. Fishing is a key part of this. Farming is a key part of this. This Government has got to get serious about food security being part of national security.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir Keir Starmer must not \u201csell out\u201d or \u201ccapitulate\u201d to the EU during a UK-EU summit on Monday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[49916,5322,2000,299,5187,6481,49917,807,25847],"class_list":{"0":"post-109758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-brexit-fishing-talks","9":"tag-brexit-news","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-fishing","14":"tag-fishing-industry-concerns","15":"tag-keir-starmer","16":"tag-uk-eu-relations"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114524769710734137","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}