Kipper Lie

The trouble is this has all become routine, and it really shouldn't have done.  Boris Johnson gets up in front of a party meeting and waves a kipper over his head.  As showmanship goes, it wasn't the greatest.  But it was nonetheless a powerful enough image to get onto the front pages.   And naturally the question in everyone's head was 'why a kipper?'.


The pretext for this smoked fish photo opportunity was that there was an EU regulation requiring fish being sent through the post to be accompanied by an ice pillow to keep them cool.  This doesn't seem to be an especially unwise regulation, unless you are a big fan of food poisoning.  But of course the point was that the EU is interfering in our business.

I am not an expert on transport regulations, but I do know some other EU regulations fairly well.  It sounded out of character to me for the EU to bring in a rule like that anyway.  That seemed much more like the sort of thing that would be devolved to member states.   Needless to say this turned out to be the case.  There was even a press announcement from the EU confirming that posting a fish was not something that their regulations covered.

But the damage has been done.  People who are only mildly interested, who are the ones who might change their minds, have again been given the message that the EU meddles in our daily lives.  It was a cynical lie on the part of Johnson intended to mislead people and undermine the nation's real interests.  And he's got away with it.  Again.