Govt needs to look to new markets, says Feetham

The Leader of the Opposition, Daniel Feetham, has urged the Gibraltar Government to look to Morocco in its Brexit strategy as he highlighted the country as somewhere to reposition the Rock’s economy.

At a general meeting in which the party welcomed five new members into its Executive, GSD Leader Daniel Feetham reiterated that Gibraltar needs to keep its Brexit strategy ‘simple’.

Gibraltar, he said, needs to ensure that it is included in the deal the UK negotiates with the European Union as well as any deal the UK negotiates with third parties and a trade deal with the UK.

“In my view, Gibraltar cannot hope to negotiate with the EU anything more or anything better than the UK itself negotiates with the EU,” he explained.

Mr Feetham said the Government needs to look to new markets and highlighted Morocco as one port of call.

“I have spoken to politicians there at the highest level and I am hopeful that if this Government does things in the way that it ought to do and if this government looks towards that area and those markets that we could potentially reposition our economy and we could potentially get an awful lot of business from Morocco.”

In a speech that focused heavily on Brexit and the state of Gibraltar’s public finances, he said: “Gibraltar is a blessed community… but like every good thing it’s got to be protected and it’s got to be nurtured and we are seriously at risk here of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.”

“And it is not going to be Mr Picardo that is going to suffer, he is rich, he is well-off, he drives a Porsche, it is going to be the disabled, it is going to be the unemployed, it is going to be the infirm, it is going to be the soft underbelly those are the people that are going to suffer at the end of the day.”

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