This is LBC from Global, leading Britain's conversation with James O'Brien.

Hello, three minutes after ten is the time. I hope you had a splendid weekend.

It's got a bit cold, isn't it? I suspect that if we weren't teetering upon the brink of epochal national change,

we'd probably be rather happy reverting to the national sport of talking about the weather,

but we are not allowed to do that today.

I just put something up.

We may return to this a little later in the programme,

and it is, I stress,

absolutely, absolutely by no stretch of any imagination ever, a criticism of any friends or colleagues

of my own. But outside the bubble of the British media politics paradigm, fish is not the reason why the negotiations for

the European Union are not yet complete. If you look at any media in Germany, France,

Ireland or elsewhere, the European Union is committed to the level playing field legislation

that would essentially prevent British

manufacturers or British farmers from selling into the single market without having to abide

by the laws or the rules of the single market. I simplify slightly, but that's the big issue.

Fish isn't. Fish is what the British government have sought to persuade you is the final hurdle or the most important sticking point.

Why, I guess, in focus groups, the fact that fish the fishing industry in this country contributes less than Harrods to the gross domestic product, to GDP, just doesn't

matter and it has conjured up a sort of rule Britannia, Britannia, waives the rules type of mentality.

That is not by any stretch of the imagination to minimise.

Yes, minimise.

I nearly said minify.

Minify should be a word, shouldn't it? Can we make minify a word today? That is by no stretch of the imagination, an attempt to minify the importance of

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