Toby on Tuesday

'All Change' 

 

 

Secretary of State for Exiting the EU – David Davis

Secretary of State for International Trade – Liam Fox

Foreign Secretary – Boris Johnson

Environment Secretary (DEFRA) – Andrea Leadsom

 

They used to say that a week was a long time in politics.   Just now a minute seems like an age.   The Tony Blair era finally ended last week when the Chilcot Report passed judgment on the Iraq War and the “heirs to Blair”, Messrs Cameron and Osborne, passed into history.   And if anyone had forecast last Tuesday that we would actually have a Secretary of State for Exiting the EU and a Secretary of State for International Trade, the wise old heads would have declared “Dream On!”   Even our own Nigel Farage was moved to say, “The appointment of David Davis and Liam Fox to Brexit and International Trade roles are inspired choices.   I feel more optimistic now.”   But there they are and no one should doubt both men’s determination to achieve their goals.   David Davis is the very best sort of Yorkshire MP, highly intelligent, independent-minded and full of courage in pursuing his causes.   And no one should underestimate the scale of the challenge that he now faces.   Nearly 45 years of legislation, much of it damaging, will need to be reversed and there will be 27 other EU countries to create pitfalls and problems at every step.

 

So David Davis will have the complete support of UKIP Thirsk & Malton as he sets about his task.   The kind of issue he will face, and one in which both Andrea Leadsom’s and Boris Johnson’s departments will inevitably become involved, concerns the fishing industry.   Over the coming weeks I will write about some of the difficulties that will challenge the new Government and a major one will be the reclamation of our nation’s fisheries.   Now in a classic combination of aggressive EU legislation and weak British negotiation, French boats are allowed to fish up to six nautical miles from the British coast but EU laws prevent British vessels from fishing within 12 miles of the French coast.   As we take back our own 12 mile coastal waters and our 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone in the North Sea, it’s easy to see trouble ahead.   So our new Ministers will be able to depend on UKIP Thirsk and Malton as they seek to recover so much that has been squandered.

 

Paradoxically, these Ministers will probably receive far more support from UKIP Thirsk & Malton than from the sitting Conservative MP here.   As a Remain voting Cameron supporter, he may well not have the stomach for a fight when difficulties arise.   Among voters in Scarborough District Council, the support for Leave was 62% in the Referendum against 38% for Remain, so the imperative to reclaim our fisheries should be clear.   Yet there’ll be trouble ahead as we set out on the task.    It was the German philosopher Jean-Paul Richter who wrote that, “the French had the dominion of the land, the English of the sea and the Germans of the air,” by which he meant that Germany was the land of thinkers and philosophers.   The EU allowed France to keep its lands and Germany its ideologies (currently the EU), but our seas were taken from us and their return is vital if we are to become a maritime, open, trading nation once more.   Our own MP here may well not wish to fight for our fisheries, but UKIP Thirsk & Malton definitely does.   So our role in the years ahead will be to support David Davis, Liam Fox, Boris Johnson and Andrea Leadsom as we withdraw from the EU, to ensure that Remain-supporting MP’s like our own do not thwart them and, under our own new UKIP leader, to replace a moribund and irrelevant Labour Party in its old heartlands, particularly in the North of England.  That should be enough to keep us busy in the years ahead!

 

Until next Tuesday!

 

Toby