GSD shows ‘no judgement and no strategic vision’, CM says in Budget response

The Opposition is “disjunctive” in its policies which represent “austerity, job cuts, and tax rises,” Chief Minister Fabian Picardo told Parliament on Monday, as he described a Budget address from the Leader of the Opposition as “chloroform for the mind”.

For around four hours on Monday, Mr Picardo set out his Budget response after a week of statements delivered by MPs on both sides of the House.

Mr Picardo was blunt in his retorts to GSD MPs, who he said had delivered “poisonous rhetoric” lacking inspiration.

One by one, Mr Picardo subjected each of the Opposition MPs’ comments during the preceding week to close scrutiny, as he told Parliament this would be one of the last times he delivered a Budget address before retiring from politics.

Mr Picardo aimed his central rebuffs at the Leader of the Opposition, Keith Azopardi, lambasting him for his budget speech, which he called a “lullaby” that was worse than “political diazepam”, but rather “absolute fentanyl”.

“[Mr Azopardi] is a man with no judgement, no strategic vision and no capacity to read people” Mr Picardo said.

He said Mr Azopardi was not a pair of safe hands, but rather “butter fingers” because the last election had slipped from his grasp.

Mr Picardo said the Opposition had not debated public finances or delivered considered alternatives.

“What has he done for financial stability?” Mr Picardo said.

“This week he said that he will use surpluses to spend more on pay rises for the public sector and to cut taxes.”

“That's what he said. I suppose it's designed to try and win over one or two civil servants who might not care so much about Gibraltar and their children and might care more about the end of the month.”

“That's not just nonsense, Madam Speaker, it's dangerous nonsense because tax cuts and pay rises have to be sustainable, not based on the size of one surplus or another.”

“In fact, that is the argument that fails to deliver financial stability. That's what creates unrealistic expectations.”

He said Mr Azopardi had hit out that the Budget did nothing for working people, describing it an “annual fiction” in his address last Monday.

But Mr Picardo said that the public sector has had the “highest salary increase in a century”, and that an increase in social security did not offset this.

“They're just marinating in this brine of negativity that's skewing all of their approach,” he said of the GSD.

“Indeed, Madam Speaker, their rhetoric is so poisonous that it's distancing them from the people that they're supposed to represent.”

“All they're pandering to are the self-entitled and to the malcontents. Look, they might gain a vote here or there, I get it. But they'll never inspire anyone, Madam Speaker, in that way.”

Mr Picardo said Mr Azopardi did not inspire as a leader and that his claims that Gibraltar is more vulnerable than ever were incorrect.

He said the Opposition had listed reasons to vote against Government but provided little reason to vote for them.

“There were lots of things in there to vote against us,” he said.

“It was an Opposition manifesto for opposition. But it wasn't the leader's blueprint for government. This was an attempt to win through exploitation of dissent.”

In turn, he said, the GSLP/Liberals fight elections with a positive purpose.

The GSLP/Liberal Government is currently midway through its fourth successive term and is truly in Government mode, Mr Picardo said.

And he dismissed speculation that a general election may be called sooner than anticipated.

“We are in the bliss that is mid-term,” Mr Picardo said.

“We are not in campaign mode.”

TREATY

Mr Picardo said Mr Azopardi has spent the “past four years sowing fear, doubt, division, casting aspersions on the process, pre-emptively trying to undermine the outcome” of UK/EU treaty negotiations over Gibraltar’s future relationship with the bloc.

“Now he wants to pretend that he's a constructive critic,” Mr Picardo said.

“He says that we should have taken him with us to negotiate. But of course, as we didn't, if it goes wrong now, it's our fault. Of course, the problem the GSD has, Madam Speaker, is if it goes right.”

He added that when briefed ahead of the political agreement on June 10, Mr Azopardi attended the meeting by himself instead of bringing members of his party to join the discussions.

Mr Picardo said that no concessions on sovereignty had been made in the negotiation and that Mr Azopardi had become “the patron saint of hesitation” when it comes to the treaty.

“Look, I get that you can't say that the treaty is fine until you see the text of the treaty,” he said.

“But you can say whether the agreement for the treaty is fine or not. Whether the things that are in the agreement are things that you agree with.”

“We've had this chronic indecision.”

Mr Picardo said the Opposition will seek to “scare” people with an untrue analysis.

He said it is very clear that the GSD has a problem and it’s that Gibraltar wants a treaty, and the party is trying to find a way to be against the treaty.

“What we were doing, Madam Speaker, is leading the most difficult and consequential and complex negotiations in our modern political history,” he said.

“I think everybody accepts that affects our border, our economy, our children's future.”

He added that Mr Azopardi does not have the political contacts that the Chief Minister has cultivated over the past 35 years through attendances of party conferences, hitting out that the opposition wants to inherit his contacts when he retires.

He called the Opposition “political supermodels” who do not get out of bed unless the taxpayer pays for it.

And on GSD criticism that he had “wheeled out” three past Chief Ministers who had supported the political agreement for a treaty, he said this was “hugely disrespectful” to Gibraltar’s former leaders, and to the GBC journalists who had invited them to offer their views on radio and TV.

MPs

In response to comments by Shadow Health Minister Joelle Ladislaus, Mr Picardo said there was no debacle with the care service in Gibraltar and that £224m had been invested in health.

In his view, the Opposition had put forward no alternative policy when it comes to healthcare.

“If they say that what they want is things to be cheaper, they should be urging us not to cut zero-hour contracts,” he said.

He said the Government is currently providing 334,000 hours of domiciliary care to 512 individuals, compared to the GSD’s 43,000 hours to 68 people in 2011.

“Mrs Ladislaus sits there telling us that we're not spending enough and that we should spend more,” he said.

“This is such a morass of contradictions, Madam Speaker, that it is impossible to unravel this Opposition.”

The GSD, he added, “can't hold a line between themselves, let alone in a negotiation.”

Mr Picardo said that, in media interviews, Mrs Ladislaus had told reporters that she would not give GHA workers the 10% pay rise they had sought.

He also hit out at comments from Mrs Ladislaus who labelled Parliament unfriendly for parents.

In response, Mr Picardo said it was “hardly onerous” to attend Parliament for a couple of days a month and that, as a single father, he understood the practical difficulties.

Mr Picardo also looked back to a previous exchange with Mr Clinton on the repayment of the Covid debt and whether interest rates should have been locked in sooner.

He said that had he listened to Mr Clinton and locked in when interest rates were higher, this would have cost the public purse £250m.

“This is the man who wanted to lock interest rates in at their peak,” he said.

He called Mr Clinton “economically illiterate” and that his predictions had been proved wrong every year.

“The Honourable Gentlemen have spent the better part of the last 10 years trying to fry our budget books, roost the credibility and grill our public servants in the Public Accounts Committee,” he said.

Mr Picardo said Mr Clinton has become the “indomitable moan man” who's lifetime achievement is “political irrelevance”.

“Sitting there in opposition, lecturing, but never doing,” he said.

He said Mr Clinton was ready to make cuts in health, education and “cut scholarships across the board”.

Mr Picardo said Mr Bossino had a position on everything except the treaty, and although there was lots of politics from him in his Budget address, there was little detail and “surprisingly very little on his own portfolios”.

In his view, Mr Bossino’s Budget speech was “so bloated with bitterness and so starved of substance it should have come with a health warning”.

“He swept through every recycled insult, he swept through every tired trope and he swept through every conspiracy theory that he could put his hands on,” the Chief Minister said.

“But the only thing he failed to sweep up and deliver to us was one credible alternative policy. Not one. He failed to sweep up any reference to the figures in this budget debate.”

“Just the usual cocktail of envy, innuendo and intellectual indigestion which leads him to say to me that I've lost all political credibility.”

Mr Picardo also took aim at GSD MPs Craig Sacarello and Giovanni Origo, placing blame on Mr Azopardi for a lack of oversight on policy questions.

He said Mr Azopardi leads like “jelly on a trampoline”, adding that it is remarkable how many “wobbles” there are when MPs ask questions.

“One is left to think there's absolutely no leadership there,” Mr Picardo said.

“But I suppose it's to be understood he's now leading a party that he and I have been in competition to be the staunchest critics of.”

He added that Mr Origo had reported the wrong figures in his budget response and was looking to “misinform” and “mislead” the public.

“I really do recommend to him, Madam Speaker, that he work a little harder and he get the facts right and then criticise the facts and tell us that we're not doing it right for whatever reason,” he said.