'Economic peanuts, political dynamite': how fishing rights could sink a UK-EU trade deal

Recent acrimony as well as historical rivalry are making a crucial agreement on European access to British waters look increasingly remote

Fishing has always been one of the biggest hurdles to a post-Brexit deal between the EU and UK. Now it is becoming one of the most bitter.

The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, last week accused the government of treating European fishermen and women as a bargaining chip", while vowing that there would be no trade deal without a fair and sustainable" agreement on fishing. Hitting back at Barnier's speech, which also covered trade, a UK source said it was a deliberate and misleading caricature of our proposals aimed at deflecting scrutiny from the EU's own positions, which are wholly unrealistic and unprecedented".