The European Union has ambushed Sir Keir Starmer's Brexit "reset" talks with a last-gasp demand for the UK to "sacrifice" its fishing waters.
Brussels bureaucrats, led by France, had called for a roll-over of the current five-year deal to ensure European trawlermen maintained access to Britain's coastal waters.
However, in a last-ditch attempt to expand its catch, the EU is reportedly demanding its accord lasts up to a decade.
In return, Brussels has suggested it will list its existing post-Brexit checks on lorry loads of food and animal products being exported from Britain to the continent.
Keir Starmer alongside Ursula von der LeyenPAAn insider said Brussels had opened the door to scrapping lorry checks if the UK agrees to an offer of "a decade of fish".
Top Tories have made fishing rights a "red line" for any UK-EU negotiations.
Former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost told The Daily Mail: "Conceding permanent EU access to our fishing grounds would be a disastrous sign of weakness.
"It would essentially take us back to membership of the much-hated Common Fisheries Policy.
The agreement would reportedly grant the EU a long-term deal on fish accessGetty"The Government should hang tough in the interests of British fishermen, though I have little expectation that they will."
Shadow Environment Secretary Victoria Atkins added: "Labour must not sacrifice our coastal communities in their 'closing-down sale' of British Brexit freedoms with the EU.
"We will not accept any deal that throws our fishing industries overboard with cut quotas or selling off permanent rights to the EU.
"The Government should be going into these negotiations proud of our country, its history and its future. Instead, they seem set on apologising, grovelling and selling off the UK's fishing treasures."
Emmanuel Macron smiling
REUTERSReform UK leader Nigel Farage has separately vowed to tear up Starmer's EU treaty if he becomes Prime Minister in 2029.
“The Prime Minister thinks he’ll get away with it but he perhaps underestimates how strong Brexit feeling still is in the Red Wall,” Farage told the Telegraph.
“The whole thing is an abject surrender from Starmer and politically, something he will come to regret.”
He added: “We’d tell the EU that any agreements are no longer legally binding on the UK, because a general election has said so. That’s what Brexit was all about. It was about us governing ourselves, well or badly.”
