Rees-Mogg no ‘Captain Haddock’

ARCH Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he is no Captain Haddock. The Tory MP for North East Somerset was reported this week to be ready to throw fish into the River Thames in protest at the deal which allows EU boats continued access to UK waters during the 21-month transition period.
But while he offered support from the Thames embankment, he stepped back yesterday from joining the fish throwers, who included former UKIP leader Nigel Farage.
The deal has been criticised by fishermen as a betrayal of fishing communities.
Rees-Mogg told LBC News that he was ‘not a fish thrower’. And in a reference  to former Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell, who once  changed his name by deed poll to Austin Haddock to highlight the plight of fishermen, Rees-Mogg said: ‘Am I going to change my name to Captain Haddock? I\’m no Captain Haddock.
‘I think this has got slightly out of hand. I won\’t be throwing fish anywhere. I have a nasty feeling that if I started throwing fish they would be brought with the wind and hit me in the face – so no.’
Rees-Mogg is leader of a 60-strong group of Eurosceptic Conservative MPs who are unhappy with the terms of the transition deal that keeps the UK locked to the Common Fisheries Policy until the end of 2020.
He described the arrangement as ‘purgatory before heaven’.
‘I think, as it happens, we have negotiated faster than the cynics suggested and that we could have done without a transition but that argument finished some time ago, six months or so ago.
‘As we’ve got a transition, now the focus has to be on the end state,’ he said.