Your Correspondent - Tell me who you walk with…
by Dominique Searle
When the fence is gone, where will we sit?
Change - always a mixed bag - has been coming to Gibraltar for some time.
Not just the significant changes of the wider world, which are profound and not areas we can significantly influence: Trump, Putin and a listless EU. But also the impact of Brexit as an accelerant on the question we have been dwelling on and defending since 16 years of border closure ended in 1985.
‘Who are we?’
Who exactly are we when our affluence is at risk - most recently the gaming point-of-consumption tax hike in UK - and when the barriers that once helped define us, not just physical barriers, are blurred or vanished. When we cease to be physically and psychologically a gated community.
It’s not a bad thing to remove these barriers, but only in a secure way. The UK’s economy may have lost as much as 8% growth and many other benefits because of creating barriers with Brexit.
Change for us will come with high points and concerns, so it won’t be easy.
Increasingly, the security we felt when we were predominantly a military base, shifted to a security we felt in being a small but prosperous and geopolitically significant part of a global structure, in the EU, with the UK.
Being part of the EU set out rules and securities, bottom lines that could be relied on. True, because of the long-term Spanish claim and the history unfolding at our gate, we were subject to pressures and exemptions. But, overall, we felt we were European citizens, part of a global, stable identity - Gibraltarian, British and EU.
IDENTITY
Cultural identity has become increasingly important to us and has a lot of support from government. Whether it’s Yanito or Llanito, whether it’s a language or not, these may well be academic debates. But the fact that the debate is there at all, points to a community instinctively looking to its identity.
And our identity is a critical debate, about art and language certainly, but also about the quality of the institutions that generations built. About how we run and respect them today. This is what will define us.
In the bubble of economic stability and affluence that we have enjoyed for over two decades, many things have been happening, quietly.
Looking back on our previous leaders and focusing on a single main impact they have had, the obvious signatures would be: Hassan - keeping the community together with an identity; Bossano - creating the underlying economic and infrastructure machine to take that identity forward and; Caruana - grabbing the opportunity of driving that machine by marketing Gibraltar into the economic opportunity within our grasp.
For Fabian Picardo it should have been a very structured, golden opportunity to take the consolidation of what came before and open the minds of Gibraltarian to what they can really do.
And so it was. We embarked on an energetic journey of diversity, unchained from the choking grasp of conservative nostalgia. We moved forward driven not so much by the label on the tin, ‘socialism’, but by more a form of welfare capitalism.
It was going flowingly until, after some restless night, David Cameron woke up and thought up a ‘splendid’ idea, a referendum on EU membership, one which would supposedly shut up his right wing critics. Que te digo…
CHALLENGE
Politically, Brexit has been Gibraltar’s biggest challenge since 1969. Not some threat Gibraltar could challenge as it did joint-sovereignty, but an actuality in which we were just collateral damage.
Picardo, far from lamenting the overnight loss of the neat career path he had set for a timed, earlier, ‘on a high’ departure from politics, grabbed the massive challenge of Brexit by the horns.
And, as the battle to avoid an economically bunkered Gibraltar unfolded, Covid arrived.
This was a massive shock for everyone and was a challenge that Gibraltar - pulling together as it can - had the benefit of the quick thinking, energetic leadership which Picardo knows how to excel in. It was a test of our resilience which we came out of better than many. It was also expensive.
And finances count. They decide the realities ahead.
Historically, the closure of the Naval base in 1984, the decision on Brexit and, on a not insignificant scale, the doubling of tax on online gaming, have exposed how vulnerable we are to the expediencies of English politics and interests. It’s not just Spain that puts us in awkward corners.
CHANGE
Without Brexit it’s unlikely we would have looked for a treaty with Spain of any kind, but for all parties concerned (Gibraltar, UK and Spain), the Treaty we have unfolding before us is an outcome that brings both opportunity and risk.
It is a path that allows us - Gibraltar and the region around us - to move on from an inescapable and existential situation thrown before us.
Fumbling along on ad-hoc to ad-hoc meetings would have been a bumpy downward spiral for all sides.
The Treaty (when the kiss comes) is also the starting point of one of the greatest challenges we have ever had before us. One in which we can, and will have to, make decisive choices.
Alongside economic challenges and opportunities, the gauntlet thrown down before us is precisely that of our identity and governance.
Increasingly, since Hassan ‘el pulpo’ (the sobriquet seems excessive in retrospect) followed by ‘el jefe’ and then ‘el emperador’, we have surrendered our voice to government and in particular successive Chief Ministers. Democracy may be a ‘numbers game’ but that is why checks and balances are vital - civil society.
How we govern our affairs, the independence, diversity and strength of our institutions. Whether community voices or the media, businesses or workers representatives assert their views and play their role. All are part of civil society.
As we foster engagement and commerce and co-operation with our neighbours, our asserting who we are and what we stand for, from Four Corners southwards, has never been more critical.
