Boris Johnson should de-escalate fishing disputes and focus on the climate

Editorial: Regardless of who is right and wrong about Jersey fishing licences, there are more important global issues to focus on

The dispute over licences to fish in Jersey waters ought to be easy to solve (PA)

Boris Johnson is completely right that the dispute with France over fishing rights in the Channel is infinitely less important than the discussions about climate change at the G20 in Rome ahead of the United Nations summit in Glasgow. But he is quite wrong to threaten legal action at this stage of a dispute in which the rights and wrongs remain so unclear.

In his meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, on Saturday, the prime minister “raised his concerns about the rhetoric from the French government”, according to a statement from Downing Street. The British government is trying to suggest that the French have deliberately escalated the dispute because Emmanuel Macron faces a presidential election next year, and getting tough with the Anglo-Saxons has a long pedigree as an electoral tactic.

Equally, it might be suggested that Mr Johnson sees his own electoral advantage in standing up to the French, so that a technical problem over the issue of fishing licences that would, in normal times, be solved in a single phone call has been allowed to get to the stage where each side is accusing the other of breaching treaty obligations and threatening to invoke the dispute mechanisms of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.