If Brexit was meant to be about trade and fishing rights, Boris Johnson has no bragging rights.
The deal the Prime Minister hauled over the line on Christmas Eve, deliberately and theatrically late to deprive the Brexiteers and the opposition time to criticise, is a trading failure.
It is difficult to categorise walking out of the world’s biggest trading bloc in order to negotiate your way back in on lesser terms and with more red tape as a roaring success.
It is nigh on impossible to portray a fishing deal that leaves EU boats in UK waters effectively for six years and only a 25 per cent increase on UK quota as a major win.
Fishing was used as a chess piece in Brexit talks and will now become a weapon of political war between the Tories and SNP as they argue over who has betrayed the industry the most.
In the meantime, many inshore boats, unaffected by quota but facing the massive hassle of importing into a market they previously had free access to will give up an uneven struggle with no sign of progress.
Brexit, in the end, was more about identity than commerce and a particular post-Imperial view of the UK as a free nation.
That clashed badly with the greater European identity that many in these divided islands have acquired over two generations of EU membership.
Fishing communities are not the only ones who will feel cheated by Brexit.
