Pathetic headlines about gunboats being sent to protect “our” fish seem to miss a major point. The reason that so much of the fish in UK waters is caught and landed by foreign boats is that they have totally honestly and openly bought those quotas from British boat owners. These so called “slipper kippers” get money for the quotas without ever bothering to take their slippers off and go to sea.
This has been going on for decades and will be almost impossible to stop and certainly impossible to stop with gunboats, as those boats are fishing legally. The Royal Navy will only be able to stop unregistered boats fishing illegally, be they British or EU owned. Which is exactly what the RN has been doing day in and day out for decades.
I don’t really see how any government could stop a Dutch or Spanish boat, with a registered office in the UK from buying quotas and fishing in UK waters. Especially when they, in some cases, bought fishing rights years ago which run long into the future.
Gunboat diplomacy was always a matter of showing off and sabre rattling, normally against poor and weak countries in colonial times. But now this government is using it to police fishing waters, while the industry the RN is there to protect is making more money sitting at home.
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