What can the Spanish really do? Stop free trade, for one

I understand Pedro Sanchez’s threat to “veto Brexit” was met with some mirth in Westminster. The Spanish prime minister, of course, cannot singlehandedly stop the UK’s exit from the bloc – and he doesn’t even have a veto on signing the withdrawal agreement.

With those facts in mind there is a temptation to think Mr Sanchez has overplayed his hand, and looks silly. Spain will inevitably have to climb down at some point before or during tomorrow’s summit – or slink away. Seen from Brussels, though, it feels too early for the Brits to start laughing just yet. Spain, like every other European Union country, does have a veto in one area of Brexit: on the planned free trade agreement between Britain and the EU.

Unlike the withdrawal agreement, which must only be passed by a “qualified majority” vote of the council (16 out of 28 member states representing 65 per cent of the total EU population), the trade agreement will need to be signed off by every single EU member and be approved by each one of their parliaments.

A government minister on Newsnight last night insisted it would be “quite unusual if something like that, with one particular country, was a spanner in the works for an entire deal for 28 countries”. This is, unfortunately, rubbish. In fact, it doesn’t even take a whole country: the Belgian region of Wallonia blocked and gained changes to the EU-Canada deal because under Belgium’s constitution regional parliaments must also be consulted. Those are the rules and they are not about to change.

That is precisely one of the reasons why free trade agreements take a long time, and why the prime minister’s claim that she’ll get one ratified before the end of the 21 month transition period is extremely unlikely to be true. (And thus why the Northern Ireland backstop is likely to kick in, despite the government’s claims).

Spain’s concern is that the future trade deal with the EU should not apply to Gibraltar, and the territory’s future must be negotiated bilaterally between Spain and Britain. Perhaps short-term factors are driving Mr Sanchez’s hardline position: there are, after all, regional elections in Andalusia next month, which borders the British territory, and where 10,000 Spanish people cross the border to work every day. Mr Sanchez may not even be in power when the trade agreement comes to be signed off – he leads a precarious minority government.

But even a change of government in Spain is extremely unlikely to change the dynamic. Mr Sanchez hails from the centre-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (no relation). But his main adversary, the centre-right People’s Party, are even more into reclaiming Gibraltar than he is. Last month the party’s deputy leader, Teodoro Garcia Egea, said there was “no other option than a Spanish Gibraltar”. It was under General Franco that a Gibraltar español became government policy, and it has been so ever since, no matter the party.

Either way, even if Spain does not find a way to sink the deal or get what it wants tomorrow, in the not even very long term it will have Brexit Britain at its beck-and-call.