Your Correspondent: The ghost of Gibraltar past....

by Dominique Searle

Bah Humbug! Bloody Editors!

They call you in the middle of a coffee to remind you about the deadline. I’m just glad I don’t have to do that any more.

The easiest thing for a journalist is to write. More difficult is to make sure someone else gets their copy in on time. But what a year it has been for media everywhere.

La cuesta de enero came early with the publication of the McGrail Inquiry report, especially for those having to read it. I have read enough of it to see that it will be central to our politics for the first half of 2026.

Of course, I fully respect the meticulous work and effort Sir Peter Openshaw and his team made. On balance, however, I remain of the view that such an inquiry was not necessary to recommend to our politicians, officers and officials that they should operate in a manner they must have known they should have.

We spend enough money on good tertiary education!

The multiple hubris that led to the Inquiry has resulted in what history may well come to recall as the most expensive self-inflicted colonialoscopy of all time.

An industrial tribunal would likely have come to similar findings on the procedural mishandling of the Police Commissioner’s end of career.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Like the UK, we have spent decades too often paying lip-service to many of the standards we aspire to live by.

The UK has had its own rash of inquiries, but it was only a TV dramatisation that rammed home the true injustice of the Post Office scandal.

A report, published in September 2024 by the House of Lords Statutory Inquiries Committee, found that inquiries ‘are wasting time and money by “reinventing the wheel” or repeating easily avoidable mistakes’ and ‘often fail to properly involve victims and survivors in the inquiry process’.

Although inquiries are established to learn from past mistakes, Lord Norton of Louth, who led the report, said ‘lessons learned’ is ‘an entirely vacuous phrase if lessons aren’t being learned because inquiry recommendations are ignored or delayed.’  It’s unusual for even half of the recommendations made to get properly implemented.

MARCHING THROUGH MAIN STREET

As for all those parties walking around proclaiming vindication, exoneration… Really?

No one can say that running Gibraltar, or running the RGP, or getting the economy going and keeping it there, is an easy task. But, the buck stops where it must.

Like all of Europe, we have procrastinated on the hard choices we should make, especially on how we spend. Do we make the sacrifices needed to truly meet the standards we espouse?

That is not just about money, it is about developing an ethos.

For Europe this includes pulling together on defence and protection of our values, understanding that to have resilient economies and protect democracy means an end to fast bucks made off the backs of the global underpaid and weak. Think UK PPE supplies in Covid.

For Gibraltar, we need to take the opportunity that our previous generations have toiled for and endured sieges for, to give us. To maximise our self-government in a way that not only the UK but international community, especially the EU, accepts and respects.

It is not enough just to be wrapped in a parliamentary cloak. This is about the day to day, a major shift in our quotidian institutional management.

MIRROR MIRROR

Take the Openshaw recommendation on note-taking at meetings, which I would say is an issue of governance and mainly a matter for the civil service. With the level of education we enjoy and the number of lawyers in the corridors of power - this can hardly be news.

Fortunately, we are a long way from the Handforth Parish Council meeting ( the Zoom session that went viral in December 2020) but the £8m mirror we have had held up to us does not show us at our best.

True, one must not underestimate the level of pressure we have put on the Chief Minister - under the slick optics and impressive stamina is a human being who has been spinning plates on sticks 24/7 for 14 years.

And the rest of us - piling our reasonable and unreasonable wants on his desk whilst, what Bossano once rightly called the ‘nasty world out there’, is snapping at our heels.

MEA CULPA, BUT..

The Ministerial statement given by the CM as the report was released made many important and valid points. There is crucial business to conclude asap.

We need to see the UK-EU Gibraltar Treaty through properly, safely.

The impact of the gaming tax hike by UK needs to be ameliorated.

And, after Openshaw’s report, ministers in the government need to step back and let Civil Servants do their job and the civil servants step up to that plate.

However, to seriously misquote the Bard ‘The mistakes that men do, live after them; The good is oft pocketed by others’.

We all get things wrong sometimes. And perhaps given the space to breathe, the Chief Minister might reflect on the fact that in his ministerial statement saying “I am genuinely sorry if you feel I failed you” does not amount to the sense of regret that the non-political public might feel appropriate. It’s not just what we feel, it is what has happened. You can’t learn from a mistake if you don’t accept you have made it.

That the McGrail saga has been more than ‘a little local difficulty’ is self-evident.

A LO HECHO…

The neat, but unstitched, spread of Openshaw’s findings also provides a bit of a cherry picking festival.

The opera plot depiction of McGrail fighting the world to save democracy does not ring true. Note Openshaw’s observations on the HMIC report and failure to implement its recommendations. Also the emphasis given by the chairman to his not recommending either apology or compensation. He could have just said nothing. Instead he made a point.

There is a curious conundrum that emerged. Publication of the McGrail report was withheld some days, to allow the Coroner’s inquest into the launch deaths incident to conclude and not be prejudiced by anything Openshaw said. Yet, had the findings the Inquest came to in this second hearing been arrived at the first time round, it seems likely that the jury’s finding and riders might have been relevant to the McGrail Inquiry.

Respecting the final Coroner’s Inquest’s conclusions, the police officers involved were not seen as the possibly ‘aberrant officers acting quite contrary to Operating procedures, unpredictably on their own…” as Openshaw commented. Rather this was found to be an accident from a chase that should not have taken place, as it did, because in Spanish waters. What the riders reflect is an institutional deficiency relating to procedure and training.

Openshaw was clearly non-plussed by the reasoning behind The Convent getting less clear information on the launch incident than the Chief Minister. What was McGrail thinking as the narrative around the incident took shape?

Well let me jolt you with an hypothetical. How would we react if two Gibraltarians (albeit smugglers) were killed accidentally or otherwise in BGTW by a foreign enforcement agency? This would potentially be a major political as well as human incident.

Clearly, unanswered questions surround the whole management of the ‘politics’ of that launch incident.

PRESS ON

Then there are the covert recordings by a serving Police Commissioner meeting the Attorney General and other senior officials. I can only wonder at that Judge Openshaw apparently sets a lower bar for police officers than the UK does for journalists who must adhere to specific codes of practice that strictly limit the use of covert recording, allowing it only under exceptional public interest circumstances.

IPSO and Ofcom enforce this so broadcasters cannot obtain audio through deception unless public interest outweighs harm, like exposing fraud, with no alternative means available. Broadcasters like BBC and Sky News mandate senior approval and logging for covert work.

TWEET TWEET

Unsurprisingly, the Leader of the Opposition, has spent Christmas tweeting (X-ing?) like there is no tomorrow, calling for the Chief Minister to resign. That’s fair politics, but perhaps he needs to consider whether the public are convinced at this moment in time that he has done enough graft, that the GSD machinery has a viable team and clarity of policies anywhere near ready to pick up government if an election were held today. The Opposition looks almost as tired as the government.

Whoever wins the next general election -fresh faces, clear policies, please.

Now, after Openshaw, the government needs to justify how it plays the ‘national interest’ card. The public want to know where we are.

In the coming weeks and months events may take place that require a strong capacity for national unity.
Clearly Parliament in UK has got a whiff of the Inquiry and rabid Brexiteers may well seek to conflate this with their objection to the border Treaty.

If we have not got things well in hand by May, then we risk getting set aside as Labour fights out a possible leadership challenge and right-wingers use anything at hand to hit the stalling Labour government.

Wake up, and smell the coffee…..Happy New Year.