Argentina has no claim to Falklands – it doesn’t even have claim to Argentina!.TA
As our towering football stars lead the charge our simpering inept politicians cower
The BBC’s John Simpson has been described as a “veteran broadcaster”. He has also been described as “a loony Lefty spouting tripe.”
Where the actualitie resides I leave for you to decide, but the issue bringing Mr Simpson once more to our collective consciousness is his singular views on the Falklands Islands which, thanks to an ill-advised dressing room chant from the Argentine squad is rather nastily back on the agenda.
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Mr Simpson thinks if Argentina win tonight the government in Buenos Aires will demand the Falklands and spark an international crisis.
So no pressure on Harry and Jude then.
He’s nuts of course, but he does have a point. Tonight should be about football rivalry (Lord knows we’ve enough of that).
But it isn’t.
Argentinian politicians – especially Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno – have been queuing up to use the game as a trigger to bring up the nasty issue of “Las Malvinas” once again.
Before we get into it, let’s remind ourselves of a few things: Argentina has absolutely no claim to the islands. To be honest Argentina has no claim to Argentina, the colonial Spanish having exterminated or enslaved or exiled the indigenous Guaraní, Querandí and Mapuche peoples before rather optimistically renaming the place “the land of silver” for Spain.
Interestingly, Englishman adventurer Sebastian Cabot was brought in by friendly Spanish king Ferdinand and played a key role in these horrors, so if we’re going the full-on colonial, one could actually make a decent claim that Argentina is actually English.
But of course that would really be as fatuous as Argentina’s claim on the Falklands – islands which have been British sovereign territory for 200 years and a place where all but three of the inhabitants voted to stay British as recently as 2013.
So what’s the basis of Argentina’s claim? Is it “nearness”? Does geographical proximity mean an occupying force can move in with impunity?
I suggest the Argies have a quick word with our pals across the Irish Sea on that one.
Yet Quirno has been quick to use the match to weaponise anti-British feeling and put the Falklands back on the agenda.
His agenda at least.
“The Falkland Islands are history, territory, sea, memory and destiny,” he said. Er, you missed out “British” Pablo.
The popularity of the government of the formerly popular president Javier Milei is currently in freefall, so you don’t really need to be a political scientist to figure out why “Las Malvinas” is back on the agenda.
And yet, when you look back at Starmer’s spineless, Britain-harming, two years in office and his replacement’s precisely zero experience of international diplomacy, you do worry.
When Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982 Margaret Thatcher sent a task force of 127 ships to rescue the Islanders. Today we’d be lucky to get Boaty McBoatface to turn up, such is the paucity of our naval strength.
It is a blessing that one of the few navies weaker than our own is Argentina’s – with only a fraction of it ageing fleet of 42 vessels operational, no submarines and precious little in the way of air defences.
Terrifyingly however Argentina may not need a navy, such is this government’s obsession with giving away vital British territory and assets.
Starmer is desperate for a legacy; may I suggest that his lasting legacy will be massively harming British and global security by giving away the Chagos Islands in an insane piece of virtue signalling which nobody voted for, is hugely beneficial to our enemies and will cost you and me more than £40bn.
Do you really trust a government that weak and vain giving away one set of islands.. to protect the Falkland Islanders’ interests?
Quite.
Just yesterday Starmer pretty much signed over the UK overseas territory of Gibraltar to Spain. British citizens in that (for now) British territory have to show their passport on entry. Spanish and European citizens don’t. It’s mind-boggling.
Indeed it is hard not to conclude we appear to be being run by enemies of Britain. And the unelected Ayatollah Burnham will do nothing to change that.
Let’s just pray that tonight Harry, Jude, Declan and the boys show us, if only fleetingly, just how great England could be again if only we had lions in charge rather than donkeys.
