General Election 2019 - Week 1 Draws To A Close
By Fabian Picardo, Leader, Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party
We are coming to the end of the first week of the pre-campaign for the General Election on October 17th. The GSLP Liberal family is preparing to select its candidates. We are putting the final touches to our new and exciting manifesto for the next four years. This is also a time to reflect on the last 8 years.
It is clear to me, as I am sure it is for many of you, that by pretty much any measure imaginable, and not just as a result of the efforts of the GSLP Liberals in the last 8 years, we enjoy a blessed existence here in Gibraltar. In terms of healthcare, education, the environment, and in the availability of public services, the cost to Gibraltarians of these services and in the contributions we make to the public purse, I believe that it is right to assert that Gibraltarians enjoy a quality of life which is hard to knock. It’s not perfect, of course. Nothing is and we always work to make things better.
Gibraltar is a thriving, bustling community - we’re all used to the pace of life here and it is often only when we leave for a few days away that we return home and are taken aback by the intensity of life in Gibraltar. I am a Gibraltarian through and through and love this wonderful place we call home with every fibre of my body. That doesn’t mean I am blind to the things I would like to change if it were within our grasp to do so. I too perceive the assault on the senses that being in Gibraltar can often be and I think it’s fair to make a couple of observations in that regard.
Getting and staying busy is a key trait of the entrepreneurial spirit of Gibraltarians. A determination to do more, build more, attract more wealth and investment to Gibraltar, to have more - all these things are key components of the enduring success story of the last thirty years despite the many challenges we have tackled in that time. It’s a large measure of what makes Gibraltar and its citizens who and what they are. As much as the next person, I too often hanker after a quiet space, or a quiet moment to reflect and recharge. Whilst I hear the criticisms about Gibraltar having become a concrete jungle, such criticism has to be set in the context of how we have achieved all that we have.
Those who point at all the development we have seen in the last 8 years and beyond as a bad thing for Gibraltar, forget to say what their alternative vision looks like. It’s very easy for critics to say ‘I wouldn’t build this’ or ‘I wouldn’t invest in that’. The real challenge of course is in offering either a credible alternative plan for growth or an honest admission that if we stand still, we go backwards in every possible way. Put in the simplest terms, the many developments we have seen in the last eight years have been largely about houses and offices that become homes and jobs for our people. We have built schools too, to give our children the best start possible.
It was Joe Bossano’s GSLP that created the financial services and gaming sector that is such a huge part of the economic output of this community. It was Joe Bossano’s GSLP that established the student grants for all, a vision that has been reaping rewards for this community in immeasurable terms. Consider the people leading this community, whether in the public or private sectors. The value of the combined experience and technical expertise that the people leading this community contribute to our society is impossible to fathom, and that was the wonder of Joe’s vision all those many years ago.
It is right also to acknowledge the role that my immediate predecessor, Sir Peter Caruana, played too. I disagreed with a lot Sir Peter did, but he took the reins of this place in 1996 and helped guide Gibraltar to the next level in many ways over 16 years. The economy did precisely as well as Joe Bossano predicted it would - in fact, Sir Peter called Sir Joe’s predictions on GDP growth in 2007 wrong and undeliverable. Despite that, Sir Joe’s predictions at election time were proved correct, time and time again, even when the GSD were in power. In our excellent manifesto for 2015, the only actual manifesto presented for the election that year, Sir Joe predicted that GDP growth to March 2020 would be £2.4bn. We achieved that target a full year early, reporting GDP output at £2.347bn to March 2019.
Since we took office in 2011, Gibraltar’s economic performance has gone from strength to strength. We have outperformed all our own benchmarks for economic performance, despite the many headwinds. We have, since 2011, transformed once more the Gibraltar we all know and love.
We have invested more heavily than ever before. In education, we have invested your money to produce schools which would be the envy of any major city, let alone a community of 30,000. In healthcare, we have invested in the delivery of new and exciting services as well as in the context of better mental healthcare facilities and services, including the repatriation of those services which we are now offering from Gibraltar. We have put the environment front and centre, passing every policy and every initiative through our environmental filter. Our future jobs strategy has been an out and out success and whilst we have what any other country would proudly call ‘functional full employment’, we will not stop until we have employed every last Gibraltarian.
The last 8 years, set in the longer historical context of all my predecessors, set against the backdrop of three British Prime Ministers, are a record that I am therefore exceedingly proud to be judged upon. I am also very excited about the work yet to be done and the many great ideas we have for the next four years. We have laid the strongest foundations possible - not just economic, but political too. I know we’re all tired of hearing it - trust me when I say that few people are as tired of it as I am - but Brexit was a challenge no one wanted but one that Gibraltar has risen to and turned into an opportunity. Never have our ties with the UK been closer. Never in our history have our politicians been better connected with the senior politicians in the UK. All this has been down to the challenge of Brexit and to the hard work and sacrifice of some of us in Gibraltar.
And so, as we move into week two of the campaign, it is important to point out what I think are the key issues in this election. The people of Gibraltar need to decide which political grouping, in their view, can continue to deliver the economic growth, year after year, that Gibraltar deserves, that Gibraltar wants and that any community needs if it is to prosper. The party of Government must be able to run Gibraltar’s economy successfully whilst properly, maturely and effectively defending the interests of the Gibraltarians in a complex, uncertain and challenging international context. I believe that there is only one political grouping that can do that, and that is the political grouping I am very proud to lead - the GSLP Liberals.
I will not tire of saying that never before in the history of this community has the choice of political leadership been more important to us. Gibraltar has a simple choice to make in a complex context. The choice is stark and it is binary - you can choose the wrong people for the job or you can choose the RIGHT people for the job. Now is not the time for novices or has beens, nor is it the time for political experiments or spent forces. Now is the time for the proven, not the promised.
Now is the time for the successful and the tried and tested.That’s why you know, as the campaign starts, that the GSLP Liberals are the best choice for Government on the morning of the 18th October.
