Britain's foreign secretary faces fine for fishing without a license

What people on this side of the pond call “Brand Britain” has taken something of a knock in recent years – especially in the United States, which the British often still view as an errant son. With unnerving speed Britain’s reputation has collapsed stateside, especially among the political right, from the country of Brideshead Revisited to a grotty Airstrip One. The symbol of the new Britain in the eyes of many Americans are the ubiquitous licenses (or, in the argot of a London copper, “loicenses”) that citizens seem to need for everything – including, most…

What people on this side of the pond call “Brand Britain” has taken something of a knock in recent years – especially in the United States, which the British often still view as an errant son. With unnerving speed Britain’s reputation has collapsed stateside, especially among the political right, from the country of Brideshead Revisited to a grotty Airstrip One. The symbol of the new Britain in the eyes of many Americans are the ubiquitous licenses (or, in the argot of a London copper, “loicenses”) that citizens seem to need for everything – including, most notoriously, owning a TV. Earlier this week, the State department warned that the human rights situation in the UK had “worsened” amid some heavy-handed enforcement of the country’s laws on so-called hate speech. Last year the then-Senator J.D. Vance joked that the UK was the “first Islamist country with nuclear weapons”.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is keen to curry favor with the 47th president and so is determined to shake off this image. He’s been saying all sorts of Whig, Macaulay-ite things about our national story that went out of style in the UK long ago. Magna Carta, the “Mother of Parliaments,” all the rest of it. All calculated to soothe the feelings of a stately fellow of the Heritage Foundation, for whom England is still the birthplace of constitutional government. “We have had free speech for a long time so, er, we’re very proud of that,” Starmer told reporters during Trump’s visit to Scotland last month.

But this stratagem may have just hit a bump, because now even the Foreign Secretary has been caught without a loicense. Last Friday David Lammy went fishing with the now-Vice President Vance, who is here for an extended visit, on the grounds of Chevening – the grace-and-favor country house granted to the incumbent Foreign Secretary. But there was a snag. It turns out that Mr Lammy did not have a rod license – and fishing without one can incur a fine of up to £2,500 ($3,400). Not ideal for a country that’s looking to burnish its libertarian bona fides.

Lammy has now referred himself to the Environment Agency, an independent watchdog that handles such matters. An act of nobility on a level with the heroes of the English Civil War, to be sure.