This dispute with Spain over Gibraltar seems to be getting a little out of hand, what with the Spanish threatening to charge car owners 50 euros (approx £43) each time their vehicles exit or enter Gibraltar from Spain and our Prime Minister holding late night talks with his Spanish counterpart. The trouble started when the Gibraltarian authorities started dumping materials in the Mediterranean to construct, so they said, an artificial reef. The Spanish took offence and say that it’s just a clumsy attempt to thwart their fishermen and prevent them from carrying out their God-given right to remove the last remaining fish from the world’s oceans.

Whatever the reasons for the current spat, it is only one in a long series dating back to when the British gave the Spanish a spanking in the War of the Spanish Succession and were rewarded with ownership of Gibraltar by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. So we British have been there for two hundred years and during that time the Rock (as it is affectionately known) has served us well, acting as an invaluable base to control the mouth of the Mediterranean and allowing us to safeguard our various commercial and military interests.

Times have changed however, we no longer have an empire and we certainly have no need of a naval base in Gibraltar, or anywhere else for that matter. To need a naval base you presumably need a navy and we’ve barely got one these days, so stringent have government cutbacks been since the end of the last war. So let’s do a deal.

Let’s sit down with our Spanish colleagues and try to come to an agreement. After all, we are both a part of the European Union – at least for the time being. Let’s be sympathetic and say, that after 200 years of British ownership, we recognise their hurt and we now want to try and make things better. Many British people spend large amounts of time holidaying in the Canary Islands, which of course belong to Spain. So popular are those sun-kissed islands with rain-soaked Britons that there are in fact far more of us living there than in Gibraltar. How about a swap? We give Gibraltar back to Spain and in exchange we get the Canaries! Simple.