Tory slated for Falkland comments
Former Tory leader Lord Howard has been condemned after appearing to suggest Theresa May would be prepared to go to war over Gibraltar.
Mrs May has vowed not to trade away the Rock’s sovereignty in pursuit of a trade deal with the EU. In an interview Lord Howard compared the situation to the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands which led to war with the UK.
The UK passport could turn dark blue again after Brexit under a £490 million contract to redesign and produce a new version of the document.
The passport is routinely redesigned every five years and Eurosceptics view the new contract as a way to ditch the EU burgundy cover in favour of a return to the colour of the past.
The current contract expires in 2019, the year the UK is set to leave the European Union after Theresa May began the formal two-year withdrawal process last week.
Tory MP Andrew Rosindell said the burgundy passport had been a source of national “humiliation”.
He said: “The restoration of our own British passport is a clear statement to the world that Britain is back!
“Our British identity was slowly but surely being submerged into an artificial European one that most Brits felt increasingly unhappy about.
“The humiliation of having a pink European Union passport will now soon be over and the United Kingdom nationals can once again feel pride and self-confidence in their own nationality when travelling, just as the Swiss and Americans can do.
“National identity matters and there is no better way of demonstrating this today than by bringing back this muchloved national symbol when travelling overseas.”
Fellow Tory Michael Fabricant said: “You keep your passport until it expires. If you renew after Brexit, I am hoping we’ll have new navy blue passports.”
A Home Office spokesman said that no decision had been made about the colour of the passport under the new contract.
The spokesman added: “The timing of any potential changes to the passport after the UK has left the European Union has not been set.”