The essence of Brexit is that, whether on financial services, fishing or foreign travel, friction is the point.
The somewhat throwback story involving a dispute between French fisherman and the Channel Island of Jersey, including the deployment of Royal Navy gunboats and a French military ship, is a case in point.
Fishing is a symbolic industry. Despite comprising 0.1 per cent of GDP, it threatened to jettison the entire UK-EU trade deal. Yet this dispute is merely a sign of things to come and it will erode the already limited goodwill and mutual trust between the two sides.
This is particularly worrisome as we seek to soften the hardest edges of the Northern Ireland Protocol or secure some sort of equivalence deal on financial services with its implications for the City.
Incidents like these also fuel the flames of permanent outrage. Leaving the European Union inevitably leads to policy clashes and diverging interests. These are then leveraged and neatly packaged to justify our exit in the first place.
Cool heads must prevail. Do not start a war unless you can win it — even a farcical one over fish. Indeed, the dispute should be seen not only in the context of Brexit but also French and British elections.
Squabbles such as these may not cost lives, but trade friction as a direct result of Brexit is already costing livelihoods and straining diplomatic relations with our natural allies. What a waste.
