The Diplomat
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, yesterday congratulated their new UK counterparts, Liz Truss and James Cleverly, respectively. For his part, the Gibraltarian chief minister, Fabian Picardo, was “delighted” by the appointment of “a great friend” of Gibraltar at the head of the Foreign Office.
“Congratulations to Liz Truzz, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, “said Pedro Sánchez through his official Twitter account. “A stage begins for the country in which Spain and the United Kingdom will continue to cooperate on strategic matters, as well as reinforcing and boosting our bilateral relations,” he added.
Liz Truss, Foreign Affairs minister in the previous government of Boris Johnson, won last Sunday over former finance minister Rishi Sunak in the election for the leadership of the Conservative Party, which has allowed her to become the third woman to head the British government (after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May) thanks to the Conservatives’ parliamentary majority.
For his part, Albares expressed his “Warm congratulations a James Cleverly on your appointment.” “Looking forward to working together to further strengthen the close relationship between Spain and the UK,” he added via the same social network. Cleverly, 53, a former minister for Europe, has been appointed to head the Foreign Office in a period marked by the war in Ukraine and by the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union on Brexit, which are currently bogged down by disagreements between the two parties regarding the protocol for Northern Ireland and which will also determine the future relationship between the EU and Gibraltar.
Precisely, Fabian Picardo said yesterday he was “delighted” with the appointment of Cleverly. “I have known James for some years and have worked very well with him in the time that he was Minister for Europe,” he said through the information service of the Government of the Rock. “He is a great friend of Gibraltar and he is well aware of the current issues which are live in our negotiation,” he continued. “We could not have wished for a better appointment and I look forward to meeting soon with the new Foreign Secretary to start our work together in this, hopefully, final stage in the successful negotiation of a UK/EU Treaty to regulate our relationship with Europe,” added Picardo, who was in London yesterday.
Picardo and Gibraltar’s deputy chief minister, Joseph Garcia, held a working meeting in London last May with Cleverly, when he was minister for Europe, and with Lizz Truss, when she was Foreign Affairs minister, to discuss the negotiations between the UK and the EU on the Rock’s future relationship with the Union after Brexit. A few days later, the Secretary of State for the European Union, Pascual Navarro, traveled to London to meet, precisely, with James Cleverly, to whom he stressed their “shared determination” to make progress in the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union on Gibraltar, according to Navarro on Twitter.
