The rabble-rousing Tory voices in the recent Daily Express piece, explosively titled “First Chagos, now Gibraltar! Fury at Labour’s deal to ‘hand Rock over’ to Spain”, are wrong.
The story comes as U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer moves to strike a Customs Union deal with Spain over Gibraltar, a move critics say could significantly undermine British sovereignty over the territory.
You can check out the full details of the proposed draft treaty here, courtesy of Guido Fawkes. Or here for the government official text.
Key concessions include Spain getting to station border guards within Gibraltar and the right to refuse entry to third-country nationals who do not meet Schengen entry conditions.
But let’s not compare apples to oranges.
Gibraltar needs this Customs Union. Because Gibraltar is not Chagos. And it’s not the first step towards handing Gibraltar over to us Spaniards, for realpolitik geopolitical reasons that escape the mainstream press.
Most importantly, it’s an acknowledgment of reality; that Gibraltar is really part of Spain’s economy since the border’s reopening in 1985, not the United Kingdom’s.
As such, Gibraltar’s entry into the EU Customs Union is great for Gibraltarians.
Any alternative, and any increased border friction, would entail disaster for both local Spaniards and Gibraltarians.
It’s not because I’m a proud Spaniard who wants to retake the annoyingly British-owned Rock visible from my shores. Nor is it because I hate Brexit.
For many Britons, Brexit made sense. U.K. foreign policy, after all, was always about playing Europeans off against each other. For us, it’s better to have you pissing on the EU tent than wetting the insides.
But Gibraltar is not the United Kingdom. The Union Jack flies over its Rock, but the enclave is enmeshed in Spain’s economy. Any limitations would be catastrophic for Gibraltarians.
The thousands of Spaniards who work daily in Gibraltar offer relatively cheap labour to the enclave. Its economy is held together by the tobacco-smugglers and gamblers who can move through the customs border frictionlessly.
The EU Customs Union is necessary to secure the precarious basis of Gibraltar’s economy. And it doesn’t risk being one step closer to handing over Gibraltar to Spain.
This is not speculation. It’s a guarantee. Not only does Gibraltar rely on Spain. Spanish and Moroccan security rely on Gibraltar staying British.
Firstly, Gibraltar is a mirror image of two Spanish cities bordering Morocco on Africa’s coast, Melilla and Ceuta. Morocco’s unilateral closure of its customs with both enclaves since 2018 and 2019, which have remained highly limited even through brief re-openings, has been catastrophic.
It has some minor upsides. For instance, Melilla’s terrace chairs and tables no longer have to be chained together lest they mysteriously end up in a Moroccan café on the other side of the border.
But the downsides are greater. Inter-border traffic constituted the lifeblood of these enclaves’ economies. Without them, their raison d’etre has become reduced to that of a strategic military outpost rather than a wealthy trading port.
Emigration from these cities, arguably the most architecturally beautiful and unique of the African continent, has become the norm.
The impact of Moroccan border closures cannot be understated, and veers into the ridiculous. For instance, restaurants are forced to serve fish illegally smuggled into the cities on jet skis. This is an absurdity for two cities that border the Mediterranean Sea.
Securing Gibraltar’s future means accepting that it is part of Spain and Europe’s economy more than Britain’s.
And, as with Melilla or Ceuta, limitations on the free flow of goods and people will invariably harm the tiny enclaves far more than the larger bordering country whose economies they rely on.
Secondly, any Spaniard and Moroccan with two neurons to rub together would privately beg Britain to never return Gibraltar.
This seems counterintuitive. After all, Gibraltar’s existence is a testament to Britain’s perfidious attitude, an internationally recognised colony, and a very liberal interpretation of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. Unlike Melilla and Ceuta, which have been in Spanish hands for centuries before Morocco’s constitution as a modern nation in 1956, British Gibraltar should be an affront to Spanish sovereignty.
It is anything but.
Were Gibraltar to become Spanish, it would set off a series of dominoes that could devastate both Spain and Morocco.
Putting history aside, the realpolitik is evident.
Melilla and Ceuta can be Spanish because Gibraltar is British. And Morocco can control the Western Sahara, which has been disputed between Morocco and the Polisario Front (which seeks independence for the Sahrawi people) since 1975, because Melilla and Ceuta are Spanish.
If Gibraltar became Spanish, we’d be hard-pressed to defend Moroccan claims on Melilla and Ceuta before the world. The same goes for Morocco’s colony, which would be argumentatively empty-handed against the independence of Western Sahara, a contested matter with the African Union and the Arab states.
That’s without considering the devastating political consequences a Moroccan takeover of Melilla and Ceuta would have for Spain.
In short, the return of Gibraltar would start populist fires in Spain and Morocco that all parties are predictably keen to avoid.
So fret not. Gibraltar’s entry into the EU customs union is far better than the alternative.
And it’s going to stay British.
