The news is making much of the government's decision to send gunboats to Jersey today to protect the island, which is a British Crown Dependency, from an apparently planned one day French fishing vessel blockade to be staged in protest at post-Brexit fishing licences granted by the island's government.
I want to stress that this is not happening by chance. One of the ships in question is HMS Severn:
Its Wikipedia page makes clear that this ship was decommissioned in 2017. But then it was recommissioned and renovated so that it might take part in post-Brexit fishing disputes.
And now, mysteriously one comes along for it to partake in. Call me cynical if you wish, but stage management dos not come much better than this. Johnson thought he needed a Falklands, could never mount such a thing now, and so manages a debacle in the Channel instead, all at the cost of keeping a ship that mounts a few machine guns when in action. I have not the slightest doubt that this whole incident has been provoked.
But let me also look at another dimension to this. That concerns the status of Jersey. I have over the last two decades spilt more ink on this than most people, and come to the inevitable and I am sure correct conclusion that no one can be really sure what the precise constitutional history of that island is, because no one can be sure that the supposed treaty signed by King John that gave it its supposed status ever existed. There is certainly no copy available now. And so it lives with an ambiguity that has suited many in its history very well.
Very well that is until the French decide to threaten, when on this occasion the stop have been pulled out, or at least HMS Severn has cast off from Portsmouth. But, is Jersey British territory?
It says not. It claims independence when it suits it. It claims to have its own government capable of concluding international treaties, something denied to Scotland and Wales. And it claims to be fiscally independent. Indeed, it often threatens to break the link when tax haven issues come between London and it. So what is the sending of the gunboat about? And who would have Jersey in the event of the UK breaking up?
Lets deal with the second question first. If the argument is that Jersey is Crown Dependency - and to date it has been - then it goes with whoever has the Crown. That's an interesting question though when the Crown is joint. We have a merged monarchy reflecting the Crowns of Scotland and England. So whose is Jersey? The question is open.
Until, that is, the question of gunboats arises. And then we see the current UK government's attitudes towards these decisions. The fishing dispute with France is genuine. The rules put in place are provocative. There is room for manoeuvre. It has not been offered. Gunboats are being sent instead. And, as is apparent, that was always the plan.
My suggestion is a simple one. The status of Jersey is uncertain. But, despite that an imperialist government in pursuit of power sees threats as a solution and has resorted to them in pursuit of a claim on an issue in which it has no need to intervene because this dispute is not within its remit. Instead it is intervening just because it has the desire to do so. It does, quite literally, want to use gunboat diplomacy. We should not ignore that.
Nor should Scotland or Wales. A government willing to intervene with a show of force in the affairs of another government with sovereign rights over an issue in dispute is capable of repeating that behaviour. And that worries me.
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The Daily Mail readers will be foaming at the mouth at this news !
“Barnier hits back at ‘childish’ and ‘pathetic’ Brexit strategies of Boris Johnson” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/michel-barnier-brexit-book-johnson-b1842560.html
Meanwhile, Jersey fisherman’s “leader” says the French actions are “pretty close to an act of war”. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/05/jersey-fishing-row-french-threats-pretty-close-to-act-of-war
I find it disturbing that this is part of the Guardian’s headline, without context, on the front page of their website on the Jersey story.
Me too
I went on the Jersey evening Post . I found this -Chris le Masurier is quoted in the Guardian article. It sounds quite accurate. Interpreting the rules to suit ourselves.
https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2021/05/05/oyster-farmer-it-has-been-an-absolute-disgrace-by-our-government/
I think the whole patrol boat response is a ‘reads well in the Daily Mail’ story. “Boris stands up to the French” sort of story.
Indeed….
I had also read that story
Jersey is supplied with 95% of it electricity via a sub-sea cable. From France @ circa 66KV
You can get all sorts of faults on sub-sea cables & they are difficult to fix.
And take a long time to fix.
Substations can have problems as well.
The French substation feeding Jersey is located near St Remy des Landes.
The nice French government makes it easy and simple for French citizens to find out all sorts of things including where substations are located.
French citizens like unhappy French fishermen citizens can thus very easily see where things are located.
I note the propensity for French citizens, when sufficienctly unhappy, to take direct action.
My suggestion to Jersey – reach agreement real quick.
“I note the propensity for French citizens, when sufficienctly unhappy, to take direct action.”
What a pity that the Brits are such docile fools that they would never be sufficiently motivated so as to emulate the French.
Sadly Chris, you are right. Far too many complacent, subservient forelock tuggers in the UK. Or is that more England and Wales?
Jersey has its own power stations….French electricity is currently being provided to the UK, some 1.65GW of it….there are two interconnectors France-UK capable of providing 3GW.
Is it just an unfortunate coincidence that this show of brexiter strength in n sending gunboats to Jersey is happening on the day of national elections? Or am I just being unfair to our wonderful, reasonable government who are renowned for their decency and integrity?
A plan
I just checked shipping in Jersey – the port is entirely clear and the number of French boats falling rapidly
There is no reason at all for this display of supposed strength
We will fight them in our tax havens! It’s pathetic, it really is. How is sending a gunboat going to stop the French cutting the leccy off? Nothing by way of solution from Boris – how could there be when he’s the cause? – just empty theatre.
You need to think and read a little more Bill. The fishermen were there threatening to blockade the port, the source of 90% of jersey’s imports. How would you expect those sworn to defend your rights to act in such circumstances ? Rude gestures, colorful language ?
They blocakde3d nothing
The let all shipping through
Jersey does not like protest though – because it tells protestors there is always a boat in the morning
This time the boat turned up to return the message
I’ve given some thought to our post-independence defence policy here in Scotland. I’m of the view that a healthy chunk of the money we save on Trident should be spent on Defence Against the Dark Arts, specifically UK psy ops units like 77th Brigade. I think it’s very likely that Scotland would be the target of considerable UK chicanery.
I am sure that is true
And deliberately subversive placing of staff to underline the effectiveness of as many organisations as possible – a technique I am becoming increasingly familiar with
How does all these petty games play in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and Rome? We have seen refusals to recognise EU ambassador (now resolved in a humiliating climbdown), allow the establishment of an EU office in Belfast, hurdles being created for customs officials in NI ports, the refusal to continue with Erasmus, and the current Palmerstonian hangover (gunboat to Agadir). All these lose goodwill, vital in any relationship. Just one small anecdote: a Danish Anglophile is holidaying in the Baltic rather than his normal Scotland, because of UK “attitude”.
Alan, can you give details of the humiliating climbdown re the EU office here? Purely so I can gloat, tbh.
We now have recognised the EU representative has ambassdorial status
Bloody fish again. Honestly. Are they labelled with little union jacks?
The threat to interfere with Jersey’s electrical supplies made me wonder how England’s energy imports are doing.
Excel spreadsheet: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/972787/ET_5.6_MAR_21.xls
HTML Web archive: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6KcJuTS_PGsJ:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/972787/ET_5.6_MAR_21.xls+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
TL;DR: England & Wales consumes between 220-250 terawatt/hour a year. To generate this, it imports a net of about 19twh a year from France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland. It also “transfers” 19twh from Scotland. This suggests that Britannia has a generation capacity shortfall of almost 40twh a year – about one-sixth of its consumption.
True, the sporacity of renewables has to do with this and the big picture is always more complex than any tl;dr. But someone should be asking all the Ministers of Energy of the past decade and especially the last half of it what the fuck they’ve been doing. Your energy security is questionable and the rest of the government keeps behaving provocatively towards those providers.
Actually, they’ve been building wind turbines….we have 24GW of wind capacity, currently providing 4.5GW.
We also have 2.75GW of biomass provision (imported woodchips)
There is still 2.5GW of coal generation available (currently providing 500MW)
4GW of nuclear still available (8GW when the planned maintenance is sorted (August this year))
27GW of gas generation is available
2GW of pumped storage.
Power usage peaked at around 40GW last winter.
This is without the short-term-operating-reserves, and the 3GW of diesel standby available, and the load-shedding agreements with various institutions with their own generating capacity.
Power usage is dropping as more people move to air and ground source, and gas, for heating. Less power hungry business helps too (steel works shutting!). And the change to LED lighting is also reducing consumption, with an LED lamp saving around 60% over an incandescent lamp, and considerable emissions reduction.
In these days of switch-mode power supplies, brown-outs are not going to happen.
The suggestion is that Brexit was in effect a vote for a state of permanent crisis as the impact of Brexit starts to be felt.
Oh yes, that’s always been the intention of many of the right wing fanatics behind it. Use Brexit to impose their lunatic extreme free market doctrine on the UK, whether we want it or not.
A shame that so many of the electorate are so politically unaware that they let themselves be taken in by the Brexiter shysters.
I have been saying this since 2017 when I saw the people backing Daniel Hannam’s Iniatitive for Free Trade, especially the American Heritage Foundation which wrote most of Trump’s legislative program. This was reinforced when Carol Cadwallador exposed the machinations of Cambridge Analytica and the involvement of Americans.
Brexit meant that they could avoid having to declare their real intentions in a general election.explains
Daniel Steman Jones ‘Masters of the Universe’ explains the origin of and nature of neo-liberalism and how think tanks funded by rich vested interests managed to infiltrate their ideas into mainstream politics.
There was a conspiracy but it was not covert. For people who were aware it was apparent. The right have used their wealth to organise and try to shape events in the way they wanted.
Those who don’t want this sort of society have not organised themselves and developed a coherent response. There are signs and emerging strategies but we have a long way to go.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste” a book by Mirowski . What happens is a semi-permanent crisis is engineered – keeping people in fear & worried. Useful for staying in power. Send a gunboat, exaggerate stuff, keep that fear & worry going. That appears to be Mendacious Fat’s/toryscum game plan.
Given Johnson’s known dishonesty re everything, and the bellicose stupidity and arrogance of the English nationalism exemplified by this government, this comes as no surprise. It is probably a stunt to get the dim witted ‘patriots’ to vote Tory today.
If its not, its yet another example of the disruption caused by the trade deal that Johnson negociated in such haste at the last possible minute last year. Disruption caused by Johnson’s incompetence and arrogance, which he is now happy to use as an excuse for some pathetic flag waving jingoism.
Another point is that the EU insisted on having such a right to retaliate written into the above trade agreement precisely because Johnson’s government proved so untrustworthy. Given Jersey is so dependent on French electricity, what is this government going to do if this dispute isn’t resolved and the French pull the plug?
A fat lot of good this gunboat diplomacy is going to be then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Collette_Power_Station
https://www.jec.co.uk/about-us/
All of this is a direct consequence of Brexit. This issue is precisely what the EU was designed to resolve without resort to conflict within Europe. I have said before, and repeat here; Britain did not leave the EU simply to protect the liberty of ‘plucky’ Britain. Britain left the EU in order to undermine ithe EU; and create international conflict where none existed.
I have spent my whole life watching British governments dragging the UK into conflicts all around the world, at the expenditure of both blood and treasure, for no discernible benefit to anyone: Suez, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya are examples of the policy bankruptcy that produces only catastrophe, over and over again; and especially for those in far off countries, of which we know little. Until Brexit, we were not irresponsible enough to reprise a form of conflict diplomacy against our nearest neighbours. We are now.
I am sick of it; but it serves to underscore why I urgently need to see Scotland extract itself from the Union at the ballot box.
Well said
Do you have any Scottish roots? Would you identify as Scottish? From having met you, you certainly don’t sound as though you are Scottish. It’s one thing for someone living in Scotland, or a Scot living elsewhere, to want Scotland to leave the U.K., but as an Englishman from Cambridgeshire [or Suffolk or wherever it is you are] I’m not quite sure why you are encouraging the break-up of the U.K. I suspect it is because: first, you still have a chip on your shoulder about BREXIT. Second, you hate the Tories. All this stuff about fascism. Yeah, yeah, yeah…. Even though they are only temporarily in power and will be kicked out when Labour or another new party can get their act together. And that will happen. Third, tax justice paid the bills for a while. Green stuff probably isn’t. But Scottish independence? That will keep you going for the next few years… Prof.
I believe in the right of people to have democratic free determination
How could I believe in that for Ireland and not Scotland?
And for the record, until the National offered to pay me for a column I made not a penny from supprti9ng Scottish issues and expect to make no more than that
Your cynicism is wholly misplaced but says a great deal about your own lack of convictions