Select a region
Jersey is now on the frontline of Brexit. It’s taken five years from the 2016 referendum – in which we, ironically, had no vote – but now the fishing fight with France has thrust the island, blinking uncertainly under the lights, onto centre stage.
It’s likely to be a brief – and unwanted - appearance, but how should the island deliver its lines?
Firstly, it will need to communicate much better than it did yesterday.
Express published this major international story about Normandy severing its links with the island at 09:30. It was clearly a serious diplomatic crisis, which had the potential to escalate into an international incident. Yet no official government response arrived until 20:09 last night.
By then, the story had escalated with threats being made in the French Parliament, positions had already become entrenched, misinformation had spread like fire across a dry headland, and lasting opinions had been formed.
Pictured: Senator Ian Gorst is leading Jersey's team in the fishing crisis.
Anyone involved in crisis communications will tell you that a swift response is critical – waiting more than 12 hours, by which time the crisis had swelled, mutated and deepened was unacceptable, irresponsible and made a bad day much worse.
But that was yesterday.
Moving on, Jersey has taken a firm position, and it is one islanders need to support. Even though officials are rather vainly dressing it all up as a ‘misunderstanding', it is clearly a straight fight over whether Jersey has the resolve to take control of its territorial waters – or not.
That will mean change - and those affected by that change will always cry foul, which is exactly what is now happening.
Threats to turn off the islands’ power are as unfortunate as they are misleading, given that the island has a legal contract with the electricity provider, and ‘turning it off’ is therefore not simply a matter of whimsically hitting a big red button on the desk of the French Maritime Minister. If it was, it can only be hoped that she doesn’t use ring-binders.
Pictured: the licences give the island control within its own territorial waters.
Amid the heat, hubris and hyperbole which always seem to accompany any international row over fishing, one essential fact remains.
Brexit has given Jersey the ability, through a new licensing system, to take control of the sea life populations in its territorial waters, and to make sure they sustain. Why would we not take that chance? Our future absolutely demands it.
Did anyone really think that a licence would be a blank sheet of paper, containing simply the words: “Carry on fishing! Regards, Jersey.”
All licences come with conditions – that’s why they exist. If they didn’t, there would be no point in having one.
Those licences replace any perceived rights to fish, based on history, ancestry, custom, folklore or whimsy.
The conditions which have led to this major diplomatic fight are based on information supplied by the French fishers about their – legal – activities over the last three years. Jersey has said that if the information provided so far is incorrect, or insufficient, then communicate that, and the licence can be amended.
Throughout this long dispute, our External Relations Minister has been accused by one side of “kow-towing to the French”, and by the other side of alienating the French customers who are essential for the future survival of our fishing industry.
Whichever way he has turned, he has been caught in the net.
It makes no sense to tell him to stand up for the island, and then cut him down just as he gets to his feet.
Now is the time for the island to support him, and the stance he, and his officials, are taking.
We now have a licensing system; it will allow us to protect the marine life in our territorial waters; it complies with the Brexit agreement; it brings in conditions to fish in Jersey’s waters, which we have every right to set. We must hold firm.
In waters which have been thoroughly muddied by threats wrapped in fear, vanity and misunderstanding, Senator Gorst and his team must remain focussed on that clarity.
Normandy severs ties with Jersey as fishing row escalates
WATCH: Power cut "retaliation" threatened as French fishing row deepens
"We want to heal this relationship as soon as possible"
“An act of idiocy” or “a sensible move to protect our waters”?
Q&A: What is the French fishing dispute all about?
