Your Correspondent SNAKES AND LADDERS

“Wow, that’s amazing.” The heartfelt view of the young man at Reception in my hotel in London who greeted me with the words “So how is Gibraltar?” And got a reply.

A good memory for faces is a massive advantage anywhere and, not least, in the hospitality trade and politics.

In his twenties, I guess third generation in UK, and as British as I am, he was responding to my brief description of the impending Treaty that will remove the physical border with Spain and give us a skeleton key for travel into the EU.

That gut reaction from him is not surprising in a UK where near 20% of graduates face unemployment, where home ownership isn’t even a dream and where swathes of the population refuse to accept the detrimental effect of their own-goal of Brexit.

Currently, Britain’s future leadership may lie between a new ‘tax and spend’ Labour leader and a maverick ‘make it up as you go along’ right-wing regime. Nobody knows. But Brexit grates on lives in Britain on an almost daily basis.

Standing in a short zig-zag line, for a long time, to enter Norway is the norm for non-EU travellers. Eventually, one gets a polite but tedious interview about the visit and then finger-prints and mugshot taken. By then it becomes an experience of holding in a certain frustration with Brits moaning in the queue about the delays.

Gibraltarians know about queues and our instinct, 96%, is to reduce them. We knew exactly what leaving the EU would mean.

Locally, many young people entering the job market or heading to university barely remember the Brexit referendum let alone closed border Gibraltar. It’s important they learn about that but, clearly, what concerns them now is having a future. That means an effective economy and its insulation from future ‘mishaps’. Stability.

In Gibraltar, our removal from a bespoke EU relationship has undoubtedly set off profound thinking about the future as we enter a new one which is less entrenched in the EU structure.

Any Gibraltar government, faced with Brexit, would have had to work full time, as the current government has done, to explore alternatives. The No 6 team have been climbing a moss covered mountain from the moment, late into the night, the June 23, 2016 election results rolled in and ended an era.

In being forward looking, Fabian Picardo and his team put every idea they could generate to the test with the objective of securing that the ‘tap’ which is the frontier between Gibraltar and Spain remained as open as possible.

Long gone are the days of having an MoD dominated economy providing the bulk of the economic support for what was a post-war population with very modest expectations. Good housing, travel, shopping with choice and general consumerism were the stuff of dreams back then.

The opening of the border, fully in February 1985, resulted from the much debated, killed, rejected and zombified Brussels Agreement. Despite many setbacks and challenges the overall effect was good for Gibraltar’s economy and proved essential to successive governments despite local rejection of it because of its clause allowing Spain to raise the sovereignty question and the British side to reject proposals that might be made.

Faced realistically with a no negotiated outcome (NNO = failed talks) or the Treaty, the latter was always the bullet we would choose to bite. But where next? This isn’t a full stop. Uncertainty looms everywhere. Look to the ongoing mess in UK that started June 24 2016.

Support and sustain was never on the cards from the UK government and support would have been minimal. NNO would have seen living standards on the Rock reduced dramatically, probably an end to the educational grants system that has been crucial to our development. No UK government would have defended to UK tax-payers support for that.

That infamous bus, with its £350m a week saving slogan, was a Boris Brexiteer fiction and was never going to come our way.

The option of doing nothing but proceeding on the basis of ad hoc meetings would not have satisfied those who invest in our economy, wherever it may have led.

So it’s the Treaty. And the silence of some political sectors, not least of many linked to the GSLP or to integrationist ideals, around the compromises that have been agreed, is a powerful indicator of just how much politics and juggling it required to get to the point we are at now.

SNAKES AND LADDERS
Elections at home and abroad, and events, conspired to become snakes, requiring even more effort from those involved, to reach ladders. Former UK ambassador to Spain, Hugh Elliott, only recently described how there was nothing inevitable to the outcome.

Among the elements that he said contributed to a successful negotiation were continuity of government in Gibraltar during the process, the PSOE remaining in power after the July 2023 general election and the UK government’s continued commitment to the talks despite being “preoccupied with its own shenanigans” after the July 2024 general election.

Europe Minister Stephen Doughty, who visited Gibraltar both formally as an MP and privately before entering government, has undoubtedly been a key stabilising force. But the points raised by Elliott refer to issues that are essentially cyclical.

A question needs to be posed as to whether or not the government, having grasped the constellation of political opportunity which it largely cultivated by patient investment in building relationships, trust and the strong legally-versed team Elliott also highlights (CM, Deputy CM and AG especially expert in EU law ), has gone far enough.

Whilst there is probably no treaty that survives the reality of radical changing politics, i.e. if the other side is led by a Trump-like character, this Treaty feels inherently temporal. In its accommodating escape routes for the agreeing parties, in Gibraltar’s case assurances from UK, it could be threatened with a peremptory end.

Perhaps if the PSOE had just got in with a comfortable mandate and Keir Starmer looked as if he was on course for a second term with only the Conservatives as the likely alternative, things might feel different. That’s not the reality.

Equally, the handicaps we accept, for example in relation to the use of the port, look like issues that in time we may want to change.

We still have over a month to go for implementation and observers of Spanish politics are suggesting the Sanchez led government could collapse any time. However many rabbits Sanchez can pull out of his hat, what certainly is looking more likely is a PP - Vox coalition forming the next, uncomfortable and probably volatile, government in Madrid. Though I would not put money on this, it is the sort of scenario we should expect sooner or later.

RIGHT CONTAGION
The Irish Times reports that only a few days ago about 600 far-right activists, politicians and social media personalities gathered at the Quinta da Salmanha, Portugal. The meeting was about repatriation of immigrants, so called remigration which is defined as “deporting not just illegal immigrants but all people judged to be unassimilated in western society, including citizens and the children of non-white immigrants”. One of the events supporters the Catalan influencer Ada Lluch who has 436,000 followers was quoted in El Pais as having tweeted that European governments are committing ‘white genocide’. She strongly support’s Vox’s leader Abascal and his foundation Fundacion Dicenso, El Pais says, expresses support for her. It’s not clear if Vox itself attended, but it evidently shares the sentiments along with other international right-wing extremists including from UK who reportedly attended.

GLOBAL TURMOIL
Then we have Cyprus nervous over the implications of a potential Farage government as regards the use it might seek to make of the UK sovereign (military) base there. Cyprus, unsurprisingly, is not happy with actions that might prejudice its own security because of the base. Until UK really invests in expanding its military capacity and the relationship with the US becomes more settled the sense of uncertainty around us will continue. So where do we find ‘our’ safe corner in all this?

Without getting into the old territory of Peter Hain and other local debates around Andorra solutions and ‘who said what’, one question I would pose - and I don’t know the answer, perhaps nobody does - is, given the goodwill, understanding and negotiating prowess of parties who secured this current Treaty (EU, UK, Gibraltar and Spain), might we have been able to find a more permanent agreement? One to see our status that recognised, perhaps independence (I know it’s all about flags but bear with me). What on the ground, in those circumstances, would be different to what we have accepted now? Perhaps the benefit of more permanent acceptance? Perhaps greater EU integration and a release for those handicaps to which we have agreed to for the present?
The answer - perhaps not directly to the question - may be simply that the Treaty now allows each side to state its sovereignty position remains intact and to feel that, perhaps, each has shifted sideways for practical advantage to the region. That a space has been created to wait and see.

With the winds of change so unpredictable, especially in Spain, I can’t help but feel that a few years down the line, even assuming success and fluidity of the Treaty, the relationship with Spain and even the EU will remain ‘high maintenance’.

We have had forward looking thinking but what is the future proofing going to look like? One assumes the manifestos of our next election - Gemma v Keith - will set that out boldly against the backdrop of a new reality. How ambitious and realistic these will be is yet to be seen.

Bedside reading: Andrew Miller The Slowworm’s Song

Podcast at https://substack.com/@dominiquesearle