In order to put an end to Gibraltar’s dispute started in July, both Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and British Prime Minister David Cameron have finally urged the European Union to mediate in the row. After days of a rising tension, providing "the perfect example of how not to exert diplomacy," says British former Labour MP Denis Macshane in Spanish daily El País. According to the ex-politician, who resigned after he was found to have fiddled his expenses, tensions on the Gibraltar border are the result of similarities between the British Conservative leader and his Spanish counterpart – David Cameron and Mariano Rajoy are more similar than they are willing to recognise. They are both weak national leaders, who do have real control of the direction of policy. Both are tired of the EU. Both have a terrible problem of youth unemployment. They both face nation-regions, Catalonia and Scotland, which do not want full integration into the United Kingdom and Castilian Spain, respectively. Both had great empires with dreams that refuse to disappear and that persist through monarchical symbols. Both have big problems relating to their party funding […]. And both have peculiar colonial strongholds, Ceuta y Melilla in the case of Spain, and the Falklands and Gibraltar in the case of the UK. […] Why this absurd dispute between two bald men squabbling over a comb, as Borges said of the Falklands war? […] What we see in the UK and in Spain these days is an attempt to manipulate the media and grab headlines, in London by sending military ships to the region, and in Spain with the proposal of setting up a common axis with Argentina to face the UK in the United Nations. I wish them good luck! :))
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 07:06:39 +0000
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