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I both agree with David Crawford and disagree.

As a fisheries lawyer I am afraid I do not agree that the EU caused the collapse of the UK fishing fleet - this happened because the UK chose to pour the vast EU subsidy the fleet receives into support for the larger fishing businesses at the expense of the smaller ones. It did the same with fishing quota which has now concentrated into a very few hands. These are the key root causes of the collapse of the UK fleet and these are UK competences. Government in both Whitehall and Edinburgh have belatedly woken up to these appalling mistakes.
Moreover if we leave the EU we will still have to work with the other EU members as fish don't respect national boundaries so generally have be managed at the supra-national level. Le CFP est mort, vive le CFP.

In general no Brexit spokesman has ever begun to explain how the UK will relate to the rest of the EU once we leave - and that is the Trillion dollar question. We will have to work that out before we vote otherwise the vote is nonsensical as voters have no idea what EU world they are voting for. As it stands If we vote for Brexit and then exercise our right to leave under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty there is no obvious mechanism to go back. That would put the UK in an appalling bargaining position, bearing in mind the EU currently regulates all international trade into Britain. To guide us through this legal minefield we have the almost unprecedented situation of a non-lawyer as Lord Chancellor and brutally cut civil service legal team.

Mr Crawford is absolutely right that our thinking on this is being dictated by Mr Murdoch. A Brexit vote on the current basis is a vote for walking blindfolded into a constitutional disaster zone. It will not end well for anyone. The only motivation I can see for the Murdoch press ramming this bungling mess down our throat (other than a natural journalistic desire to be provocative) is the pie in the face he received in Parliament.

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