‘Brexit’ would destroy Gibraltar The Rock could find itself excluded from the main trading bloc and at the mercy of Spain.

GIBRALTAR — Many outside the UK may not have seen the thought-provoking Channel 4 "mockumentary" UKIP: The first 100 days, which dramatizes what might happen in the unlikely event of Nigel Farage’s UKIP taking a majority of the seats in the House of Commons in the coming election. After the europhobe electoral euphoria, what starts to play out on the viewers’ screens is the salutary reasoning that leads all mainstream party leaders in the UK, including current Prime Minister David Cameron, to continue to recommend staying in the European Union.

The withdrawal of Airbus, Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover and other major names from manufacturing in the UK would, according to the narrative of the "mockumentary," follow as naturally as night follows day if there were to be a "Brexit."

For Gibraltar, the disastrous consequences of economic exclusion from our main trading bloc — in our case mostly in financial services — would be compounded by giving Spain a brand new opportunity to lock us out at the border. It is a weapon Madrid has used before, trying to bully Gibraltar into a sovereignty arrangement that would have us abandon our inalienable status as a self-governing British Overseas Territory and become an unwilling part of Spain.

It is well known that when José Manuel Garcia Margallo, the current Spanish foreign minister, first walked into his office, he asked officials if he could just close the frontier with Gibraltar. Only Gibraltar’s British membership of the EU protected it from such an action. But of course the people of Gibraltar would defeat such an action, whatever the cost. Democracy and self-determination are the only way ahead.

Setting aside my ideological position as a socialist, I can say that none have been stronger than David Cameron and the Conservatives in their robust defence of Gibraltar’s international position and their respect for our right to self-determination. They vow not to even discuss negotiations on Gibraltar with Spain without Gibraltar’s consent. A defense of Gibraltar’s rights has even featured in the Conservative and UKIP manifestos for the May election.

But some of the electoral promises in those same manifestos could unleash a political meteorite heading right for Gibraltar. And this raises the question whether those same politicians, who defended us from Tony Blair’s attempt to force an Anglo-Spanish joint-sovereignty deal on Gibraltar, understand the risk to my small nation if an in-out referendum in the UK threw us out of the EU.

Even if Spain did not slam the border gates closed, experience has shown us that heavily fettered access may actually be worse than isolation.

For Gibraltar the threats are several. The very reason Gibraltar was left out of the Customs Union and agricultural policies when the UK acceded to the European Economic Community in 1973 was that the Rock relied on food supplies from Morocco and shipping from third countries while Spain imposed a total land blockade on us for 16 years — food, phone lines, everything. Occasionally, a corpse was let through for burial on humanitarian grounds.

A British businessman might in future need an EU visa to visit Paris

There is a strong case to argue that if Britain reconsiders its position in the EU we, as a long-standing, law-abiding and integral part of that union, deserve once again to have our particular circumstances considered. Can we really cease to be EU citizens against our will? Can an EU member state, indeed the EU itself, now just cut us off? It is not that simple, surely.

Modern Gibraltar is locked into a Europe of services and free movement of persons.

What applies morally to little Gibraltar, applies to all of Europe. Either we are a free and functioning market, winning and losing equally, or we fall apart, each seeking to pursue our own agenda instead of working for the broader benefit. It was common purpose, not short-term gain, that led to our forefathers sowing the seeds of postwar unity for a Europe focused on the benefits of fair commerce and free trade.

The potential disconnection of the UK from the "four freedoms" on which the EU is built would undoubtedly create huge challenges for British business. Imagine losing the benefit of the freedom to move people, capital, goods and services unhindered throughout those parts of the European Continent that already form part of the EU.

For us in Gibraltar, probably the smallest of the EU jurisdictions, losing the ability to freely provide services to the single market of 520m people would be an existential threat in economic terms. That is why my government is fully engaged with the UK Government’s Balance of Competences Review.

Gibraltar’s size is often our greatest challenge. Yet in the context of a UK exit from the EU, our problems, massive though they would no doubt be, would be discernible and identifiable.

I believe that the same would not be true of the economies of each of the distinct nations — Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland — that make up the UK. The effect would stretch beyond the obvious consequences: England's City of London, whose services would be locked out of the single market; or Airbus Industries potentially leaving Wales; the hurdles and added costs that would encumber the sale of Scotland's great products, from whisky to knitwear across the EU. There would be the loss of EU funding for Northern Ireland, stymying Belfast City Council's key objectives in European affairs. In fact, the effect on the lives of millions of Britons, even some of the most Eurosceptic, would be enormous. Supermarket shelves would be affected as much as the market in holidays, with the changing situation faced by UK travelers when arriving on holiday or business at airports and other entry points of EU nations.

Some forget that whilst the UK is steadfastly not a part of the Schengen Area, its citizens have, since 1973, enjoyed freedom of movement within the EU. At first blush, that would disappear on a British exit.

A British businessman might in future need an EU visa to visit Paris. He might pay a levy for his goods to be sold to clients in Germany and could face a tax on transfers of cash into the EU, whether moving money in or out (and that means potentially the whole EU, not just the less than mature eurozone, which the UK has been right to shun).

Indeed, the best example of what it would be like to do business with Europe, or go on holiday to Europe, in a Brexit future, is to compare with what it is like to travel to the US on holiday or business today.

Sure, it's not impossible, and there is plenty of business done across the Atlantic; but — forgetting the distance and time difference — it is nowhere near as easy as it is to do business within the EU, despite the language barriers.

When quizzed, UKIPers and Tory Eurosceptics have no answer to the argument that it would be a retrograde step to deprive British businesses of access to the European Single Market.

So if the UK votes for a Conservative government and an EU in/out referendum automatically becomes the policy in Downing Street, the answer should not automatically be to choose the "out" option, but to check and cross check that we, the British people, shape an outcome that allows us to remain in a position to exert a moderating influence and to deliver a Europe for the future that meets citizens expectations today. That would be a good solution to the issues that need resolving in the EU. Now, more than ever, Europe is worth fighting for and those of us who believe in the opportunities of European commercial and political unity must stand and argue our corner harder than ever.

Gibraltar is not the only reason that Britain should remain in the EU. But it is one more.

Fabian Picardo is the chief minister of Gibraltar. (He tweets at @FabianPicardo).