We want friendship and co-operation with the people of Spain. But the people of Gibraltar said no to Joint Sovereignty in our referendum of 2002. By … - Fabian Picardo

One of the top Spanish diplomats of recent generations, Snr Inocencio Arias – who was until ten years ago Spain's Permanent Representative at the UN - has recently recognised, in a memoir, that all of Spain's strategies for the recovery of Gibraltar have failed. We did not need to be told that, nor do we want any strategy to succeed, but he is right to have started a debate in Spain which in effect is telling Spanish diplomacy what we have been saying for generations: Wake up and smell the coffee: Gibraltar will never be Spanish! Yet in recent months, the attitude of Spain's foreign ministry appears to have ignored the failures of the past and is working hard to secure even greater failures for the future.

Mr Tusk, who has been given to using the analogies of the divorce and divorce petition, is behaving like a cuckolded husband who is taking it out on the children.

The position of the United Kingdom is as usual so nuanced that it's difficult to see where they are on the spectrum, but look, that's what Britain's like and we all love being British.