Leave-voting British fisherman speaks of Brexit regrets on Danish TV

A Leave-voting fisherman has spoken about his regret after voting for Brexit and said “life has become very difficult” since the UK has left the trading-bloc.

Ian Perkes, a fish exporter from Brixham, in Devon, told the Danish broadcaster DR that he was “lied to” about the implications of leaving the EU and it has increased costs for his business.

He said: “Do you think I would have voted to leave if I’d known it was going to cost me another £80,000 a year? Of course not. Only a fool would have voted to go out, wouldn’t he, knowing that.”

After being asked by the presenter if he felt he was lied to, he Mr Parkes responded: “Well we were lied to. We were told we are going to have free trade, we were not guaranteed we were going to get our 12-mile limit back, but we assumed with what we were reading and what we were being told that that would be a case.”

Asked by the presenter what Mr Parkes would say to himself if he could go back to the ballot box in the EU referendum in 2016, he said: “Don’t be a fool, stay in Europe. Why would you want to leave? Life has become very difficult since we’ve left and I don’t see no happy ending at present.

“So yeah I did get it wrong, hands up, I admitted I was wrong, but I’m not an isolated case.”

Mr Perkes previously told the Daily Express that his sales had declined from £375,000 in January 2020 to £74,000 in January this year.

Fishing contributes less than 1 per cent to Britain’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but became important symbolically for Brexiteers who wanted to regain control of fishing waters.

But since leaving the trading-bloc fishermen have complained about additional red-tape when exporting to the EU, causing significant delays.

On January 18 fishing industry workers descended on Whitehall to protest Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal and drove lorries around Whitehall emblazoned with “Brexit Carnage” and “Incompetent Government Destroying Shellfish Industry.”

Since then environment secretary George Eustice has admitted that the deal the government signed with the EU on fish fell “short” of expectations by the industry. But he added it was a “big step in the right direction.”