Fishing, Northern Ireland: EU, UK back to Brexit wrangling

BRUSSELS (AP) — It was late on Christmas Eve last year when the European Union and Britain finally clinched a Brexit trade deal after years of wrangling, threats and missed deadlines to seal their divorce.

There was hope that now-separated Britain and the 27-nation bloc would sail their relationship toward calmer waters.

Don't even think about it.

Such was the bile and bad blood stirred up by the diplomatic brinkmanship and bitter divorce that, two months from another Christmas, insults of treachery and duplicitousness are flying again.

“It was written in the stars from the start,” sighed Professor Hendrik Vos of Ghent University. "There were a lot of loose ends. Several issues that would invariably lead to problems, like fisheries and trade in Northern Ireland.”

It was the economically minute but symbolically charged subject of fish that held up a trade deal to the last minute. And fishing is also providing a wedge of division now.

This week France was rallying its EU partners for a joint stance and action if necessary if London wouldn't grant more licenses for small French fishing boats to roam close to the U.K. crown dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey that hug France's Normandy coast.

In France's parliament last week, Prime Minister Jean Castex accused Britain of reneging on its promise over fishing.

“We see in the clearest way possible that Great Britain does not respect its own signature,” he said, adding that “all we want is that a given word is respected.”

In a relationship where both sides often fall back on cliches about the other, Castex was harking back to the centuries-old French insult of “Perfidious Albion,” a nation that can never be trusted.

His Europe Minister Clement Beaune added to this late Monday. “The European Union scrupulously implements the...