Global politics - Upholding the integrity of elections

THIS may not be the best week for anyone who feels overwhelmed almost to the point of despair by the travails of this small Republic to look beyond these four green, damp fields in the hope that, elsewhere, better angels prevail.

Last weekend a former leader of the British Conservative Party, John Howard, suggested that Prime Minister Theresa May would be prepared to go to war to defend Britain’s imperial interests on the Rock of Gibraltar in the face of an EU commitment to prioritise neighbouring Spain’s interests in Brexit negotiations.

Mr Howard, once the butt of Ann Widdecombe’s infamous put-down — there is “something of the night about him” — compared Gibraltar to another remnant of empire and uninvited conquest, the Falklands. He suggested Ms May follow Margaret Thatcher’s example and send in the gunboats “to defend the freedom of another small group of British people against another Spanish-speaking country”. If someone once offered as a potential prime minister can be so patently unhinged, even if he spoke in jest, then it is almost possible to begin to understand the depth of the lunacy driving Brexit. But it gets worse.