Nov 17 – EU Exit Would Be Disastrous For Gibraltar – Varadarajan Tells Literary Festival
If the United Kingdom were to leave the EU, the economic and political consequences for Gibraltar would be disastrous – this was the central bleak message of Tunku Varadarajan’s inaugural Gibraltar Chronicle lecture delivered on Friday evening at the Convent as part of the Gibunco Gibraltar International Literary Festival.
Mr Varadarajan, who tutored Chief Minister Fabian Picardo at Oxford in the early 90s, examined the flawed legal basis to Spain’s sovereignty claim and defended Gibraltar’s right to self-determination. He argued that a Spanish Gibraltar, even if it were possible, would enjoy a level of autonomy that would destabilize the integrity of the Spanish state.
In one of many memorable phrases, he described the presence of Gibraltarians on the Rock as: “…not a cipher, interloper or trespasser – they are people with a story.”
Nevertheless, Mr Varadarajan identified the possible EU exit by the UK as the biggest threat currently faced by what he described as “plucky Gibraltar.”
He explained that, should the UK leave the EU, it would leave Gibraltar isolated and existing in a sort of limbo with any attempt to enter the EU as a city state or even an independent country automatically blocked by Spain’s veto.
In order to combat this threat, Mr Varadarajan urged Gibraltarians to lobby the UK’s political class and influential opinion writers so that they are made acutely aware of the consequences an EU exit would have for the Rock and its people.
“Your fight is not to keep Gibraltar British,” he concluded, “but to keep Britain European.”
Tunku Varadarajan is a Brooklyn-based writer and journalist, formerly editor of Newsweek Global and Newsweek International. He is currently the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Research Fellow in Journalism at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a weekly columnist for The Daily Beast.
(Pic shows: Mr Picardo, Mr Varadarajan and GTB CEO Nicky Guerrero introducing the lecture)
