“Please read all the text and the supporting documents and stop playing politics with the People of Gibraltar whose future YOU and your ilk put in great jeopardy with Brexit.”
A political row erupted this week. Comments by former Conservative cabinet minister Suella Braverman about Gibraltar’s post-Brexit arrangements prompted a heated response from the territory’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo.
Braverman, who left the Conservative Party to join Reform UK in January, claimed the Rock is “now British in name only” following a draft UK-EU treaty setting out plans for a more fluid border between Gibraltar and Spain. Her remarks were aimed at Picardo, whom she accused of being “wrong… or misleading,” about the implications of the agreement.
At the heart of the controversy is the proposed post-Brexit trade framework between the UK and the EU covering Gibraltar. Under the arrangements, around 15,000 people who cross the frontier daily for work and other purposes would no longer face routine physical checks. Gibraltar would effectively align with the EU single market for goods, removing checks and controls on goods moving between the territory and Spain.
Braverman seized on reports suggesting that Spain would have the final say over whether UK travellers could enter Gibraltar. Writing on X, she said: “When I predicted that this was going to happen, the First Minster said I was wrong.
“It turned out that he was wrong… or misleading. We have ceded control of Gibraltar to Spain. It is now British in name only. It can’t go on like this.”
Picardo quickly responded. In a message on X, he began by correcting Braverman’s description of his office, noting that he is chief minister, not first minister. He then accused her of selective reading and political opportunism.
“Please read all the text and the supporting documents and stop playing politics with the People of Gibraltar whose future YOU and your ilk put in great jeopardy with Brexit,” he wrote, adding:
“Stop misleading with your selective quotation of a complex document largely negotiated by YOUR Conservative government when it was in office and YOU were Home Secretary.”
Since taking office in 2011, Picardo, leader of the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party, has sought to balance a firm commitment to British sovereignty with pragmatic engagement with Spain and the EU. He has positioned himself as a defender of workers’ rights and an opponent of what he describes as ultra-right-wing politics.
Needless to say, Braverman’s intervention is likely to strike a chord with sections of the UK electorate that remain deeply sceptical of post-Brexit compromises, particularly within the staunchly Eurosceptic press, which reacted with fury to the prospect of Gibraltar regaining pre-Brexit freedom of movement.
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