CI mood cools as Brexit heat is turned up

Senator Ian Gorst could not ‘at this point envisage anything that would mean that we wouldn’t probably be party to the same deal as the UK’ but he made the case nonetheless.

He went on to say that Jersey’s right to reject the deal and build a new, separate relationship with the EU was ‘something we’ve always known right from the start’.

So why bring it up now?

Rhetoric about ‘forging a positive relationship going forward with Brussels in a different way’ must be planned and with purpose. Otherwise it is irresponsible tub-thumping.

This is a public message, a warning to the UK that Jersey is not prepared simply to accept any outcome from the talks and has options.

Quite how those options would play out is hard to judge. For starters, the Crown Dependency would have to ask the UK for an ‘entrustment’ so that it could sign its own international treaty.

Given the sensitivities about both the Acts of Union and the constitutional authority of treaties, the suspicion has to be that Jersey is making its case now because it has doubts about the direction in which talks are going.

Like the reports about Channel Islands fishing rights being bargained away there is little in the public arena that is not deniable or so vague as to be meaningless.

Asked whether the UK would use Guernsey’s fishing rights as a bargaining chip, the government refused to directly address the position of the islands.

Instead, a spokesperson spoke of the UK’s desire to agree a fisheries framework agreement under the mantra of ‘taking back control’.

Not surprisingly, Guernsey’s chief minister is also on high alert, chastising the UK for its threat to break international law by failing to honour an agreed treaty.

After years of talk of the UK ‘having our backs’ over Brexit and ‘understanding our needs’ the mood in the Channel Islands is shifting.