Read the original article at the Daily Express

Last week I made a flying visit to Gibraltar where there is still considerable alarm about Brexit and fear that the border with Spain may be closed in retaliation

I met a number of politicians and each had a particular view on what should happen as the UK negotiations its withdrawal from the EU. One wanted us to give a firm assurance that Gibraltar would be an integral part of any deal.

Another proposed rather more radically that Gib should become a devolved part of the UK. My own solution is simpler: that we should say to Spain that whatsoever it does to Gibraltar we will consider done to us. I assume that 12,000 Spanish residents do want to go on crossing the border every day in order to work and that Spain would rather this continue than have 12,000 of its citizens suddenly on the dole.

I assume that Spain also wants us to go on importing Rioja by the lakeload and that it wants its citizens able to live in the UK and to work here. We must make it clear that any deal to preserve that would be jeopardised by posturing against Gibraltar. 

One Gibraltarian MP observed gloomily that Theresa May would always be tempted to put the rights of 65million Brits before those of 30,000 citizens of Gibraltar. I replied that we had never betrayed the small population of the Falklands even though it had cost lives and limbs. 

Ah, he replied, but that was in the days of Margaret Thatcher. I dearly hope I was right when I said that I thought the current PM would be no less determined. Meanwhile the Spanish authorities make it up as they go along. 

One day you just cross the border at will and the next join a huge queue. When our easyJet was diverted to Malaga and we had to get buses to Gibraltar, the official who met our aircraft proclaimed that nobody could leave the plane without holding a Schengen visa. Rot. 

All we needed under EU law was an EU passport and most of us, knowing that, just carried on but some were reluctant, thinking they needed ­Schengen visas. It is all part of a silly, unnecessary game played by silly politicians in pursuit of a doomed territorial claim. It is in all our interests that it should stop now.