Gibraltar not on the table, May tells Tusk
But Prime Minister agrees with EC president to ‘lower tensions’ as Brexit negotiations unfold
Theresa May warned Donald Tusk that Gibraltar’s sovereignty was nonnegotiable in talks at Downing Street. Mrs May met Mr Tusk eight days after giving him formal notice of Britain’s intention to leave the EU. The pair are understood to have agreed on the need for an early deal on migrants’ rights to give EU citizens in the UK and Britons living in the EU certainty about their future. Officials said the meeting was “very constructive”.
THERESA MAY told Donald Tusk that Gibraltar’s sovereignty is not up for negotiation in her first face-to-face talks with the European Council president since she triggered Article 50. Mrs May welcomed Mr Tusk to Downing Street for lunch eight days after giving him formal notice of Britain’s intention to leave the EU.
Downing Street sources said the pair had “a general, broad chat”, but are understood to have agreed on the need for an early deal on migrants’ rights to give EU citizens in the UK and Britons living in the EU certainty about their future. Officials said the meeting was “very constructive”. One insider said: “They both said ‘let’s get this done’.”
Mr Tusk is not allowed to begin for- mal negotiations because the other 27 EU member states have not yet agreed guidelines for the talks, but Mrs May left him in no doubt that Spain must keep its hands off Gibraltar.
EU sources said the two leaders had agreed that they would “seek to lower tensions that may arise, and also when talks on some issues such as Gibraltar inevitably become difficult”. They said they had “a good and friendly meeting which lasted almost two hours”.
Spain has been accused of making a “land grab” for the Rock after it emerged that EU leaders want Spain to have a veto over whether the Brexit deal applies to the British Overseas Territory.
Downing Street said in a statement on the meeting: “The PM made clear that on the subject of Gibraltar, the UK’s position had not changed: the UK would seek the best possible deal for Gibraltar as the UK exits the EU and there would be no negotiation on the sovereignty of Gibraltar without the consent of its people.”
The statement added: “Both leaders agreed that the tone of discussions had been positive on both sides, and agreed that they would seek to remain in close touch as the negotiations progressed.”
The European Council will vote on whether to adopt Brexit guidelines drawn up by Mr Tusk on April 29.
Earlier in the day Mrs May launched the Conservative campaign for the local elections, which will be held on May 4. Addressing an audience in Nottingham, she said there must not be any “no-go areas”, insisting that the Tory party can win seats anywhere by capitalising on “chaos and disarray” in the other parties.
Mrs May accused Labour of abandoning the political centre ground to pursue its “ideological obsessions”.
Ukip faced fresh turmoil last night after Welsh Assembly member Mark Reckless quit the party just weeks after it lost its only MP. Mr Reckless, a former Tory MP who defected to Ukip in 2014, said it had achieved “job done” by bringing about Brexit.
There have always been two types of globalisation – one driven by integrationist intent and the other by the holy grail of free trade. The first is best represented by the European Union, essentially a form of top-down suppression of national sovereignty in pursuit of the supposed nirvana of a world without borders.
Unsurprisingly, it turns out that nobody much likes this kind of globalisation, with the exception, that is, of the international elites that preside over it. In this sense, the votes for Brexit and Trump have much in common. Both represent a rejection of an imagined utopia of economic integration, policed by global government. The idea is well intentioned, even admirable in some respects, but many Westerners have come to believe they are being made to pay far too high a price for its supposed benefits.
Donald Trump, in his inauguration speech, promised that: “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first.” Theresa May tiptoed around much the same narrative in her party conference speech last October. Britain would take back control over its own destiny, she said, and then, more pointedly: “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.”
I was in Washington at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund when Mrs May made her remarks. They could have been directed specifically at this gathering of global policy elites. Many imagined they were. The reaction was one of horror; their world, 70 years of post-war liberalisation in the making, appeared to be crumbling before their eyes. As the economist Stephen King puts it in a compellingly argued new book on the retreat from globalisation – Grave New World; the End of Globalisation and the Return of History – “Isolationism is, once again, becoming a credible political alternative. Without it, there would have been no Brexit and no Trump.”
Yet for those who listened beyond the nativist sound bites of Mrs May’s speech, there was also an entirely different message. We were leaving the EU, she said, in order to more effectively pursue the goal of a “global Britain”, one of sovereign nations trading freely with one another for mutual benefit. It is not isolationism, but this second, more market-driven vision of globalisation that the Government pretends to champion. And to give them their due, ministers are setting about it with gusto; an exhausting programme of international travel has been put in train. For Philip Hammond, it was Germany last week and India this. Despots or democrats, it matters not; Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, was off to Manila to talk about “shared values” with the self-confessed killer President Duterte. And for Mrs May, it was a whistle-stop tour of the Middle East, ending with the golden goose of Saudi Arabia.
This is a very different form of globalisation to the creeping subjugation of the nation state represented by the EU. Even so it is almost bound to be in conflict with the isolationist instincts of many of those who voted for Brexit. Like all successful political movements, Brexit was a grand coalition of forces, in this case between the overtly populist, anti-immigrant and protectionist at one extreme and of libertarian idealism at the other. As a pragmatist, and during the referendum campaign, reluctant Remainer, Mrs May appreciates only too well the challenges of squaring the circle. There was and remains a monumental clash of ideas at the centre of the case for Brexit.
All free-trade negotiations with India, for instance, start with a demand from India for a lot more work permits. That’s not going to sit happily with many of those who voted for Brexit. It is, moreover, a very odd champion of global free trade that starts by repudiating it with its near neighbours, as inevitably will be the case if we end up with the threatened “no deal” with the EU.
Perhaps the closest thing to the completely open, global-facing economy the Government aspires to is Singapore. We can applaud the low-tax, small-state model Singaporeans have carved out over the past 50 years, but I doubt the discipline and self-reliance of their approach hold many attractions for large parts of the British electorate. In achieving its growth, Singapore has seen levels of immigration that make Britain’s seem trivial; nearly a third of the population is foreign.
International trade is in the long run always good for the economy; it’s a great engine of change and progress. But inevitably, there are casualties; many workers will find themselves displaced by the low-cost foreign competition it gives rise to.
The row over Gibraltar is fortuitous for the Government in some respects. It frames the EU as the enemy, and therefore helps mobilise patriotic support against the Brussels machine. But underlying contradictions at the heart of the Brexit bandwagon cannot for ever be swept under the carpet. Sooner or later, they will have to be confronted. The real tests of Mrs May’s leadership still lie ahead.