Britain’s post-Brexit priorities are starting to smell a bit fishy
I get scared just listening to the shipping forecast, so I have nothing but respect for fishing communities and those who fight to protect them.
But Brexit is doing something very peculiar to our sense of perspective.
Just compare our reactions to news about finance with those we have to news about fish.
Read more: Farage dumps fish into Thames over “death sentence” transition deal
Tell us that trade deals rarely cover financial services, or that financial institutions will lose passporting rights on Brexit, and we hardly raise a stoical murmur.
Tell us the UK is staying in the Common Fisheries Policy until December 2020, and we go bat-fish crazy. Angry demonstrators spent yesterday literally throwing dead fish into the Thames outside parliament in protest, over what amounts to an extra 21 months under the current system. And MPs for coastal constituencies are at it too.
Please, let’s pause this piscine panic, and consider – unfashionable though it is – the facts.
The whole British fishing industry employs about 24,000 people. It contributed 0.12 per cent to the UK economy in 2016. That translates to £1.4bn gross, or just enough to run the NHS for three days.
Contrast the financial services industry. First, let us be clear that this is not just a London thing. Bournemouth, Leeds, Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh are all profoundly important and thriving financial services centres.
Financial services is, quite simply, what the whole of the UK does best.
Our financial services industry employs over one million people (3.1 per cent of all UK jobs), and millions more indirectly. The financial services sector contributed 7.2 per cent to the UK economy in 2016. That is £124.2bn gross, or the price of 5,000 new schools, or millions of new social homes.
I realise that feelings about fishing run very deep, perhaps anchored in memories of long-lost cod wars and troop-packed Dunkirk trawlers. We all, of course, recognise the very valuable and dangerous work our fishermen (or, as the Labour party says, fisherpeople) do, and are rightly proud of our fishing industry.
However, we must keep a sense of balance, even amid the hyper-charged emotional hubbub of Brexit.
Government policy must be rooted in evidence and an appreciation of the needs and interests of the whole of the UK. If the facts point us towards a policy, then that is the policy we must choose.
On that test alone, the government needs to give much more attention to protecting financial services than it has done so far. After all, if we want to invest in our fishing communities (or in any others), we will ultimately need to do so with some of the taxes raised from the UK financial services sector.
So as we stare at footage of dead fish being hurled into the Thames, let’s try to keep a sense of perspective.
Read more: London’s financial system needs to be better prepared ahead of Brexit