Ten years after Brexit, Gibraltar prepares for new chapter 

Ten years ago today, on June 24, 2016, the morning after the Brexit vote, I was scared. I don’t mind admitting it. 

The night before, I’d been at the count when the Gibraltar result came in, the first of the night across the UK. We were small, we’d all voted pretty much the same, and it was an easy count. Gibraltar was for Remain. 

I was doing some stringing for the Press Association, the main UK news agency, and one of my tasks was to phone in the turnout and the result. When I called with the turnout figure, the chap on the other end of the line thought I’d lost the plot. “Polling stations are still open,” he said, as if to a child. He’d forgotten the time difference and became terribly excited when I explained we were an hour ahead. 

Later, the PA job done, I focused on our own product. After we put the paper to bed in the early hours, I lay on my bed watching the live coverage on Sky News as I drifted off. 

When I awoke, the result was a given. 

I remember walking down to the newsroom at around 6am feeling lost, empty inside, as if in mourning, tired and drained from the lack of sleep and the stress. The magnitude of what had happened was too big to comprehend. 

In Casemates I bumped into Alberto Espinosa, a Spanish radio reporter I know who also strings for a major Spanish news agency and a national daily. He asked me for a reaction for his morning bulletin. I politely declined. I had to get my head around things. I was grateful he didn’t press me. 

By mid-morning, Prime Minister David Cameron had resigned. We have a photo of all of us in the newsroom, gathered around a screen watching it live. Our faces say it all. 

I sat down to write a piece for the next day’s edition, something that captured the mood but also set our sights on the future. 

I reflected on a future filled with uncertainty. What would be the shape of Britain’s relationship with the EU? What would be Gibraltar’s place in that relationship? How would Spain react? What impact would it have on the EU? 

The hawkish Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo, Spain’s Foreign Minister at the time, was already rubbing his hands in glee, talking about planting Spanish flags and excluding Gibraltar from any withdrawal agreement. 

“In that respect, the UK’s reaffirmation yesterday that it will not move on sovereignty or even discuss it against the wishes of the Gibraltarians was welcome,” I wrote. 

“Britain must stand by that commitment because, as this community has signalled time and again, our British sovereignty is not up for discussion. It is something that not only Spain but its EU partners too should take on board.” 

“Yesterday amounted to a leap into the unknown. For all their promises of taking back control, those advocating Brexit never laid out a concrete plan to explain what shape the future would take. We are journeying into terra incognita.” 

Who would have thought back then that, almost 10 years on, we would be sitting around a screen again watching a Prime Minister resign, the sixth in that short period? 

The failures of Brexit are now plain to see. 

Back in 2016, the Brexiteer talk was of sunny uplands, free from the shackles of an EU bloc that would collapse after the UK’s departure. Instead, in 2026, despite its many challenges, countries are still queueing to join the EU and many Leave voters regret their choice. 

Today, 56% support rejoining the EU, according to polling by YouGov, and 22% of those who voted to leave now back returning to the bloc. Support is even stronger among younger adults: 68% of respondents aged 18 to 34 are in favour of rejoining, according to an Ipsos poll this month. 

The UK, under Labour, has embarked on a deep reset of its post-Brexit relations with the EU after years of fractious animosity under the Tories. 

But even though support for rejoining the EU is growing and many Leave voters regret their choice, Reform, led by Nigel Farage, one of the architects of Brexit, is on the rise. Polls suggest it would be the largest party if there were a general election today, albeit short of a majority. 

Former Times and FT correspondent William Chislett, writing for the Elcano Royal Institute yesterday, put it like this. 

“Whatever the Labour government might be able to achieve by the time of the next election in its EU reset runs the risk of being undone by Reform if it formed the next government or was part of it,” he wrote. “All in all, a mess.” 

And Gibraltar? 

For the Rock, the past 10 years of Brexit have been defined by uncertainty, compounded at times by elections in the UK, Spain and Gibraltar that brought changes of government. 

We have wrestled too with our own domestic challenges, not least the McGrail Inquiry, and with a rise in the cost of living exacerbated by the economic impact of war in Ukraine and the Middle East. There was also the Covid period, the trauma of which we too easily forget. 

In the bay and in the harbour, meanwhile, increased military movements are a reminder that we do not live in a bubble, a message underlined by the UK government’s call last year for society to prepare for war, lest it arrive. 

But despite the flux, 10 years on we have a window of opportunity to reshape relations with the EU and our closest neighbour for the better, ensuring a degree of normality we perhaps did not enjoy even inside the bloc. 

There are, of course, legitimate concerns about the changes that are coming, from immigration to security and the impact on parts of our economy, not least retail. We are changing the cross-border dynamic after 300 years, so unease is inevitable. 

On security at least, one can take some comfort in the additional resources being deployed at the border and in town, not least facial-recognition CCTV, and in the fact that, when it comes to major threats such as terrorism, Spanish law enforcement agencies have long provided the first line of security for everyone in this region, us included. 

Any initiative to strengthen that cooperation can only be positive, though no one is under any illusion that it won’t be challenging too. 

Much as was the case 10 years ago, Spain’s fractured political landscape, and now the UK’s too, will make the road ahead bumpy, especially if, as is widely predicted, Spain’s general election next year delivers a Partido Popular government propped up by the far-right Vox. 

Chief Minister Fabian Picardo told Spanish journalists last week that Spanish opposition parties would be “foolish” to undo a treaty that was delivering positive results for communities on either side. 

But that argument depends on the agreement being implemented, provisionally or otherwise, and on enough time passing for it to bed in, for the inevitable early practical hiccups to be resolved and for people to start seeing the benefits of fluid movement. 

That last point, crucial as it is, may be harder to appreciate than one might think because, apart from the absence of border checks, treaty implementation may not feel like the big bang some people are expecting. That is partly because we have already been spared the worst of Brexit, despite the chaos around us over the past 10 years. 

The treaty’s primary achievement is that we will avoid the nightmare scenario of a hard border, something we have thankfully not had to deal with save for a few occasions when individual Spanish border officers acted unilaterally. 

What will a PP/Vox government do in future? Who knows, and we should certainly consider that prospect and have a game plan should it arise. 

Viewed through the prism of the past 10 years, though, a deal between the UK and the EU to safeguard our future is surely the best outcome we could have hoped for from the situation we were left with. 

Last week, Cécile Thibaud, Madrid correspondent with the leading French financial daily Les Echos, offered an optimistic outsider’s assessment of the Gibraltar agreement as we chatted about Brexit. 

In a world filled with conflict, where many borders are hardening and countries are becoming more insular, the UK, the EU, Spain and Gibraltar have managed to achieve the exact opposite, she told me. 

As she saw it, that achievement of cooperation and calm diplomacy should be celebrated.