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Brexit Party candidate tweets about ‘British fish from British waters’ and it all goes downhill

Mia Jankowicz

Christopher Barker with his fish and chips in Grimsby the day he tweeted about "British fish in British waters". Picture: Twitter - Credit: Twitter

A Brexit Party candidate made possibly the most Brexiteer tweet ever when he made the case for ‘British fish from British waters’, and Twitter had a few things to say to him.

Christopher Barker, the Brexit Party’s parliamentary candidate for Grimsby, tweeted a video of himself having fish and chips on the seafront. He said the party’s work would not be done until “we have British fish from British waters landed on British shores – and trawled and processed using British jobs”.

The tweet appears to have gone down well with his base, being retweeted more than 2,100 times – but that impact was outweighed by the more than 5,300 replies, many of which were confused about what a “British fish” is.

Novelist Sam Sykes said: “What are you gonna do, bro, give the fish monocles and social anxiety?”

Another Twitter user Jo-belle helpfully provided an illustration of that.

Journalist Julian Shea asked: “Do British fish swim on the left?”

But Kevin Turvey pointed out that “they all have little blue fishy passports though”.

It wasn’t all carnival – numerous Twitter users countered his argument with basic facts about the industry, saying that 75% of UK catches are exported to – you guessed it, the EU.

EI pointed out that the UK has already sold most of its fishing quotas abroad anyway. “We don’t get them back when we Brexit,” said EI.

London School of Economics visiting professor James Ker-Lindsay told Barker he “clearly didn’t understand”.

“We need to trade as we don’t eat the fish we catch because we don’t like it,” he said. “We eat fish from other waters. We need to cooperate. If we close ourselves off, we’d better learn to like mackerel very fast!”

Barker said in reply: “It is wrong that EU (CFP) denies 50% of the allowable catch in UK waters to British fishermen.”

But things started going seriously awry for Barker when people noticed an embarrassing issue.

The car Barker was using, a black Citroen, had appeared in the video. A black Citroen with the same number plate is listed on the government’s MOT check website as being both untaxed and having an expired MOT.

“You should probably tax and MOT your car if you’re going to show off your number plate on social media,” said John Hoggard.

Twitter user Andrew Stoneman said: “Wild idea … but how about obeying British laws for British motorists?”

Ex-Grimsby docker Mike Stanton said his brother had been a fisherman and told Barker to “do one”.

Contrary to the Brexit Party’s stance against the EU, he said: “Fish merchants and multinational companies destroyed our industry. 
”Do one.”

The New European has approached the Brexit Party for comment about the car.

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