Don't get angry -- save our fish with the CFP

The Graun has a rather tedious article in the series on who was to blame for the Labour defeat, but has this from R Burgon, candidate for Deputy Leader:

Burgon wrote that Labour had lost the election not because of Corbyn’s popularity ratings but as a result of broken promises on Brexit that meant the public could not trust that their manifesto could be delivered.

The Graun might need to have a deep self-critical analysis of its own electoral campaigning. Among several other owlish moments:

Angry yet? [at Johnson's Mustique holiday] Well, don’t be. Because this whole episode illustrates something important about how to fight Boris Johnson, and it’s knowing when not to waste your breath....while anger can be a great motivator it can also slide all too easily into becoming displacement activity,... If you don’t like what Johnson is doing with the power he has accumulated for himself then the answer is working out what it takes to win that power back, not raging against every provocative decision while refusing to engage with the root cause of them

The link to 'anger' points to a piece I missed by E. Shafak, a ' novelist and political scientist':

I used to love my anger....anger felt good. It felt right and righteous. It even made me love Aristotle....[and]...the US philosopher and poetRalph [sic] Waldo Emerson. “A good indignation makes an excellent speech.”... Injustice. Inequality. Discrimination. Patriarchy made my blood boil.

However:

while the beginning of anger might feel wonderful, the rest of it is, in fact, quite toxic, repetitive, shallow and backward....a feminist with whom I had a lot in common, got upset when I said that patriarchy made women unhappy, but it also made many men unhappy, especially those who did not conform to conventional masculinity – and we should connect with those young men. Her response was full of anger: “I’m not allowing men into my movement. Let them deal with their own toxic masculinity.”... anger, when left alone for too long, is highly corrosive. And, most important, it is addictive...f we make that our main guiding force, we will be lost in the maze of our own cultural ghettoes, echo chambers, identity politics.

It's enough to make you --well, nearly hope. Continuing this promise, the editorial gets interested in an actual issue, but only as a cultural matter, which is their expertise, As usual, they have suddenly discovered this, somehow intuiting it from the Islington air:

Fisheries make up a tiny proportion of the UK’s economic activity – roughly 0.1%; around three-quarters of that is on the processing side of the industry. But that understates the cultural significance of fishing to a nation surrounded by water. The freedom to make a living from the sea is vital to many communities’ sense of self-sufficiency and self-esteem. It reaches deep into a national sense of independence, which is why the common fisheries policy (CFP) has felt like an affront to sovereignty...Britain’s self-image [is] to conjure the myth of an island nation, ruling the waves, buccaneering on the high seas.

 Of course,it is all an illusion, clinging to romantic and superstitious plebs in coastal areas:

[After Brexit the UK's] waters are its own to manage within an “exclusive economic zone” extending 200 nautical miles from the shore...The reality will feel different... The UK exports 80% of its catch. The majority goes to the EU,

An old bit of finger-wagging is dragged out:

the EU side will demand ongoing access to UK waters and Mr Johnson will acquiesce because the clock will be ticking.

I really miss old Barnier warning us about clocks and how they can tick. A nasty moral dilemma emerges:

There are requirements to follow scientific advice on sustainability, but expert voices do not always speak louder in EU capitals than fishing lobbyists. [I thought the EU was the only hope for the environment. And we must not be too critical of our friends and allies]. Few diners begrudge the Danes their share of North Sea sprats for use in pig feed [stuff the puffins!] ....If a post-Brexit government had the will to change the relationship between British consumers, coastal communities and fish, it could not be done on a unilateral basis.

No other way of dealing with the EU except full compliance, no other markets outside the EU, no other relationship with the EU except membership.

Meanwhile. for an account of why Labour lost Redcar, try this from The Full Brexit: