This is the BBC's electoral map of the UK following the 2005 general election. It shows which political party's candidate won in which part of the country.As you can see, the constituences forming the south-west tip of England, a good part of Scotland, and some other coastal regions, are held by Liberal Democrats.
The Conservative party needs to be challenging the Lib Dems in these parts of the country. To do this, it would help to have some policies that would be attractive to local voters.
One "industry" that still has some presence in these parts of the country is the fishing industry. However, since the United Kingdom entered the European Community on 1st January 1973, we have had to cede access to all of British fishing waters to the European Community - including France, that has its own fishing grounds, and land-locked Austria and Luxembourg, which have none.
The shameful way in which this came about, and the ensuing destruction of Britain's fishing industry, has been charted admirably by Richard North and Christopher Booker in The Great Deception. Before the last General Election, the fishing situation in the waters around Britain had got so bad that Conservative Party leaders had formally endorsed the Fishing Green paper produced Conservative MP Owen Paterson.
But when Cameron became party leader, he shelved this committment.
Christopher Booker today reports:
"Brussels has allocated 73 per cent of the cod quota in the English Channel to France, only 8 per cent to Britain."
What electoral sense does shelving the admirable and right-thinking and appealing fishing policy make in those coastal regions of the UK where the Conservative party doesn't currently have any elected MPs?
4 comments:
Yes I wownder how much money in terms of fish vlaues that have been lost that would be .Recently as Irish chap argued that the Paddy`s were not net beneficiaries if you took the fish into account.
How much worse off are we ? It should be possible to work out . The electoral mayp is terrifying by the way . the regionalisation of voting patterns makes a mockery of the continuation of the UK
As I recall, Ministers don't like to provide estimated figures for the cost to the UK of the Common Fisheries Policy.
It is one of those real but hidden costs of membership that the media gives almost zero attention to.
I think that the Government has in the past admitted that the cost of the CAP is around £800 per family of four per annum.
Millipede was on R4 the other day trying to defend the scheme, saying in his typical nulabour way how it was great that the Givernment got involved in this thing in the first place (after several hundred millions wasted) but how "we" now had to reform the system (thus undermining his first assertion.
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