David Pratt: What Brexit has done to Gibraltar shows the UK's disintegration

Then again, just like us Scots they too had voted to remain in Europe but were taken out against their will. In fact, now is perhaps as good a moment as any to remind ourselves that some 96% of Gibraltar’s residents voted to remain.

And yes, I know the Gibraltarian view is complex, with the residents of this outpost of Albion voting to remain in Europe on the one hand while also supporting continued attachment to the UK.

The fate of “the Rock”, as Gibraltar is popularly known, has always got the dander up of both British and Spanish alike. Who can forget for example Michael Howard, former Tory party leader, who suggested that Britain could go to war to resist Spanish efforts to increase its influence over Gibraltar?

Then barely a year later in November 2018 it was the turn of Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sanchez to threaten to torpedo Theresa May’s newly minted Brexit deal with the EU over the issue.

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But even before those spats, back in 2016 while I was talking to Gibraltarians that fateful day as the referendum results came in, there seemed little doubt that they themselves knew which side their bread was buttered on.

How curious then that as we still wait for signs of white smoke from the UK-EU negotiations in Brussels on a post-Brexit trade deal, there has been barely a peep about Gibraltar. Or, that was the case up until a few days ago when a report in the Spanish newspaper El Pais sent Brexiteers scurrying and unsure whether to divert the diplomatic gunboats from the English Channel to the Straits of Gibraltar.

The cause of their commotion was to be found in the El Pais story that said a deal between Spain and Gibraltar was close, allowing Gibraltar to join the Schengen Area alliance of European countries that have abolished border controls. There is, of course, a wonderful irony here in that such a deal – should it be confirmed – would effectively be forced by Brexit and would bring Gibraltar closer to the EU than ever before.

For such a long time now as Boris Johnson’s government has sought a Canada-style free trade Brexit deal for the UK itself, Gibraltar has wanted to become part of Europe’s Schengen free-movement area and eventually the EU’s customs union, both bodies to which it has never belonged.

This for many Brexiteers of course is just not cricket, while Remainers can’t help having a field day with the news that Gibraltar would be part of the Schengen set-up.

Just a cursory glance over comments on Twitter these past days was all it took to see the mixed response from both camps.

“The final collapse of empire,” complained one Remainer ironically. “Brexit has sprung a leak,” observed another, while one outraged Brexiteer insisted that “Gib has no responsibility in these matters ... which were a matter for Whitehall given that Gibraltar was legally part of the UK just as much as Surrey.”

There was outrage, too, that amid the reports of the Rock’s proposed entrance into Europe’s Schengen zone, British visitors to Gibraltar will have to show their passports but Spaniards will not.

But all jibes aside though, as any number of observers have consistently pointed out, not only does the issue of Gibraltar encapsulate many of the concerns that will haunt UK-EU relations once Brexit has taken place but confirms yet again how tightly interdependent Britain is with certain EU countries.

The inescapable fact remains that this is a crucial issue for both Gibraltarians and Spaniards alike and has exposed the problems that will arise if Britain leaves the EU on terms that include a hard UK-EU border.

Talk to people from either side and most will tell you that imposing a hard border would certainly hurt Spain, but Gibraltar’s economy would suffer disastrous damage.

Gibraltar relies heavily on inflows of goods and people, including 15,000 Spaniards who cross the border daily to work in the territory, whose population is less than 34,000. Even under the current controlled conditions the local Spanish province of Cadiz also benefits from cross-border trade and traffic.

Should a new Schengen-based arrangement be established it would represent an historic step forward for the cross-border workers from Spain’s economically depressed Campo de Gibraltar area, where livelihoods are heavily dependent on political decisions regarding sovereignty issues.

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But as El Pais warns in its report, should EU-UK talks fail, “Gibraltarians with a holiday home in Spain, tourists, house cleaners working in the informal economy and the self-employed could be facing long delays” and “wet-stamping” of passports at the border. Goods would also be subject to stricter controls, with hard-to-predict economic and labour consequences.

If common sense prevails then a deal could see all this avoided and the wishes of most Gibraltarians and their Spanish neighbours satisfied. But that kind of clear thinking, as is obvious by now, has perpetually been in short supply throughout the whole long sorry Brexit saga.

Negotiating enhanced free movement for a British overseas territory like Gibraltar has always been highly touchy for a Tory government, which, as we all know, champions a much harder Brexit deal for Britain itself.

For the moment, the talks over Gibraltar between the UK and Spain continue just as negotiations between the EU and Britain also grind on over the future relationship post-Brexit.

Should a separate mutually beneficial deal between Spain and Gibraltar along Schengen lines and structures be struck, many would welcome it.

It would also, though, confirm the utter lack of cohesion that has been the hallmark of Britain’s Brexit strategy from the start and only add to the sense that the UK is inexorably heading in the direction of disintegration.