WE’RE NOT IN DESPERATE STRAITS ON GIBRALTAR

I HAVE spent time in Gibraltar over the past few years: I am well aware of its anxiety about Spain’s perpetual claim to sovereignty over this tiny, but strategically vital, British Overseas Territory.

Two months ago, I was chatting to its military Governor (Lieutenant-General Ed Davis) when a big local builder came up to this former Marine and told him: ‘I will give you my 200 strongest men should Spain try anything.’ I don’t think he was joking.

But we on the mainland should calm down. Talk of a Falklands-type war is absurd: it is plain wrong to assert the EU has just put the future sovereignty of Gibraltar at stake as part of its negotiations with Britain over our departure. It is wrong even though every British TV news bulletin has excitedly claimed this to be the case.

What the EU guidelines, published last week, actually say is: ‘After the United Kingdom leaves the Union, no agreement between the EU and the UK may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom.’

In other words, they are ensuring Spain will not use Gibraltar as a negotiating chip in the negotiations over the future relationship between the UK and the EU: Gibraltar will not be part of that discussion, but reserved for bilateral talks between the UK and Spain.

There was no mention of Spain’s territorial claim over the Rock. Indeed, as Gibraltar’s chief minister Fabian Picardo told the BBC’s Eddie Mair yesterday: ‘I was surprised that was all there was in the document. There was no reference to sovereignty.’

There may well be some haggling between the two governments over Gibraltar’s propensity to pull in businesses by highly attractive tax deals. But ignore the scaremongers who claim its 30,000 inhabitants are Brexit hostages.

And anyway, they know how to look after themselves.