Regretting Brexit: We spoke to Billingsgate’s fishmongers at 5am

It’s been over a month since the referendum and hardly a day goes by when a newspaper doesn’t report how screwed the UK is on almost every level of society and how many people who had voted for Brexit are seriously regretting it.

Many people in the UK’s fishing industry were in favour of Brexit, believing it would remove the quotas on the number of fish that could be caught in a year.

Billingsgate Market at a fresh 5:15am

With this in mind we decided to head to London’s Billingsgate Market- the largest inland fish market in the country- to talk to fishmongers about whether they think Brexit has been good for business so far.

Mr. Ahmed

“Many people here voted because they thought it would be an end to quotas in British seas. The problem is that we buy fish from all over the world and removing EU quotas wont make much of a difference to where we source our fish.

“Another problem is that Brexit has caused the pound’s value to drop meaning that we’re now paying more for stock and customers are having to spend more money. There’s been a big drop in sales. We should not have left the EU.”

Hollie and Lucie

“The prawns we sell here come from France and they’ve got so much more expensive recently. The French have just been putting the prices up, meaning we have to sell them at higher prices. I was in favour of leaving as well.”

Muhammad

“Ever since Brexit, things have started to go slightly downhill. The market’s gone really quiet because fish prices have gone up. Customers who still come are always complaining about the higher prices now. I really don’t know what’s going to happen to be honest”.

Yousaf

“People think that being in the EU meant we were sharing our waters with too many people and that if we left we would have more fish for ourselves. I don’t think this is the case, there aren’t enough fish to meet UK demand, so leaving the EU means we’ll have to pay import taxes on a lot of the fish we eat.

“Leaving the EU has not being helpful because the pound has devalued. It’s been really tough because the prices are changing everyday. Some companies have even stopped exporting to the U.K, we aren’t getting any Norwegian salmon or fish we used to source from India. This means we are running low on deliveries. Brexit has not been good!”

@Ranter_Rager