Aspiration over detailed substance, but UK/EU reset is good news for Gib

In announcing the UK/EU reset deal on Monday, there was an inescapable sense that this was more about mood music and intent over substance.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, spoke of “a roadmap” for “friendly cooperation” that signalled “a new beginning for old friends”, words echoed by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Antonio Costa, the President of the European Council.

The agreement itself included commitments for cooperation ranging from defence and security to fishing, easing trade barriers including veterinary checks on foodstuffs, establishing youth mobility and ensuring immigration fluidity for travellers.

But a close look at the formal text of the agreement suggests most of it is aspirational and forward-looking, littered with phrases like “will” and “should”.

It was a pragmatic framework for future agreements, in other words, and the technical work is yet to come. Some of the agreements may materialise sooner than others, others may not come to fruition at all. Time will tell.

Am I upset we were not included in Monday’s announcement? No, because for all the furious speculation in the lead-up to the summit, Monday was never going to be about Gibraltar.

We’ve spent nearly five years on the technical stuff relating to our own treaty. I, like most other people here, just want it done, with all the usual caveats about red lines and such like.

The only brief mention about Gibraltar on Monday came from Mr Costa, who stumbled with his answer but quickly corrected himself to say a deal on Gibraltar was “not very far”.

I give more weight though to Maros Sefcovic, the European trade commission overseeing the Gibraltar negotiation for the European Commission.

Mr Sefcovic had a chat with Foreign Secretary David Lammy in a side room in Lancaster House after the morning summit and later posted on social media that the UK and the EU both remained “focused on successfully concluding” the Gibraltar talks.

“The momentum is key,” he said. “It's high time to get the job done.”

It’s hard to disagree with that and, putting aside our frustration about this protracted process, it’s not a bad thing for Gibraltar that the UK and the EU are trying to get on better.

On Monday Chief Minister Fabian Picardo confessed he was running out of metaphors to describe the current state of play, before deploying his latest one. The deal, he said, was “excruciatingly close”.

I think we can all agree on the word ‘excruciating’. And while we have no detail, all parties in the negotiation have made clear repeatedly that they remain committed to a Gibraltar deal and are upbeat about its prospects.

The backdrop to Monday’s summit is the war in Ukraine and President Trump’s foreign policy at a time of global upheaval, technological revolution and a swing to inward-looking populism.

While all of this may seem far removed from Gibraltar, it’s not.

The point was well made by General Sir Patrick Sanders, the Royal Gibraltar Regiment’s new Honorary Colonel, during a recent visit to the Rock to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

A former Chief of the General Staff – the professional head of the British Army – Sir Patrick has a distinguished career in senior command posts both at operational and strategic levels. He knows his stuff, in other words.

“Geo-strategically, we're in very, very troubled waters,” he told the Chronicle, adding that the change in the world order was “probably nothing short of a revolution”.

The stability of the past 80 years “is over”, international relations no longer dominated by the rule of law as we enter an era “where it’s all about hard power”.

“For Gibraltar, that means being inextricably linked and close to the UK, but it also means being part of the wider European community and NATO,” he added.

If you think all of this has little to do with us, look out into the bay.

A day before the summit, a rather battered-looking Royal Navy Astute-class nuclear powered submarine sailed into port to load up on munitions and carry out other work.

It was a reminder, if any was needed, of Gibraltar’s important strategic role as a logistical military lily pad between the UK and hotspots in the Mediterranean and beyond.

Viewed from that vantage point, Monday’s announcement of a post-Brexit reconciliation between the UK and the EU takes on not just greater significance but also a touch of urgency too, for London and its European allies, and for Gibraltar.

The Tories are of course complaining about what they termed Sir Keir’s “surrender summit”, as is Reform. That noise will be loud in the coming days and weeks.

And even before our treaty is agreed, there are warnings from the UK opposition camps that Labour will sell Gibraltar down the river.

But tempting as it may be to heed a siren call that presses age-old buttons and taps suspicions rooted in legitimate grievances, we should be wary.

The bit they’re leaving out, lest we forget, is that they caused this whole Brexit mess in the first place, and for all their talk of betrayal, most people in the UK now regret leaving the EU.

A YouGov poll in January found 55% of Britons now say it was wrong for the UK to leave the EU, with just 11% seeing Brexit as more of a success than a failure.

As the UK media covered Monday’s summit, there was much talk of reopening Brexit wounds which, if not yet healed, were starting to scar.

Except in Gibraltar, where 96% of us voted Remain in the 2016 referendum, Brexit was never resolved.

Nine years after the 2016 referendum, we’re still trying to pick up the pieces and make the best of it.