Quelle horreur! Now it's expensive salmon!

Is there no end to the barbarity of Brexit? Amid further sabre-rattling and willy-waving, the Graun charts another step in the decline of civilisation as we know it. First they came for cheap strawberries during Wimbledon. Then fresh tomatoes and crisp lettuce. And now:

Salmon exports, a significant part of Scotland’s fishing economy, would become a more expensive option for EU diners with a 2% tariff on fresh salmon and 13% on smoked salmon.

The background, leading to this tragedy: 

Mordaunt insisted the country would not be “barrelling off a cliff edge” and hoped to have a deal by autumn. It [sic] said the government would be able to divert money from the EU coffers to to [sic again] “level up” the British economy... Mordaunt also strongly hinted that no-deal planning was back on the table. Asked what preparations the government was making for a collapse in talks she told the House it “would be prudent and wise for us to prepare for every scenario”.

Specifically, and in support:

“We are not going to see the compromises coming from Boris’s government,” Villiers said, arguing that the common fisheries policy (CFP) was “grossly unfair”. ... the government was “intensely conscious of how crucial fisheries are to the Scottish economy” and fishing communities and would defend them.... the fishing communities “were sacrificed” when the UK joined the European Community in 1973 and would be defended.

The EC will not eat our salmon lying down:  

Catherine Barnard, a senior fellow at the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe, said in a separate report published on Tuesday the threat of no deal raised the prospect of ugly fish wars in addition to trouble over the jurisdiction of the European court of justice in disputes over trade and state aid and European convention on human rights.

It's not clear what she meant by the last bit. I thought the jurisdiction of the ECJ  in disputes would no longer apply. However, Barnier's willy has risen to the occasion with the return of an old well-loved phrase:

Crashing out would strain future relations with the EU and according to Barnard would present “significant legal trouble”.

And Operation Fear still moans from the grave:

A recent study by the Wageningen University in the Netherlands suggested that while UK fishing would gain $420m (£400m) from having exclusive access to UK waters, it would lose $500m from the imposition of tariffs and non-tariff barriers [NB] on its exports, said James Kane, an associate at the independent thinktank [!] the Institute for Government.

It's tempting to do an economist and say that this confirms that the CFP currently 'costs' $420m. The future losses depend on an effective imposition of tariffs and non-trade barriers without the threat of retaliation, or protest from EU consumers (remember there was once to be civil unrest in the UK over strawberries and lettuce). The prediction also assumes the EU is the only market?

Meanwhile, a counter-argument is available, as ever, in the invaluable Briefings for Britain