AH Vignette: Cross of St. George

The meeting with Joe on the Mediterranean migrant crisis was starting to drag as it entered its third hour, and for the first time David began to feel grateful for his guests ability to prevent anyone getting a word in edgeways when he was on the topic. He'd heard it all before of course, and the mental break he could take gave him the opportunity to gather his thoughts for a moment.

It had already been a long week, first the phone call with Donaldson to finalise details for the upcoming trip to Montserrat- St. Patrick's over Port Diana thank goodness. Then the difficult interview with Andrew Marr on Gibraltarian concerns over the Spanish migrant workers. He thought he'd handled it well until Nige put his foot in to complain about Madrid's attempts at 'demographic manipulation' as he'd put it. That had gone down a storm both at home and on the continent- nearly provoked a diplomatic incident in fact- but frankly it sounded like Gibraltar would go Kipper if they were given the option based on the noises coming from the place.

And the Med had thrown up more issues- yet another ship full of migrants impounded attempting to approach Malta, and there was no way they were going to allow more people to the camps on Comino, so they'd had to take them on to Lampedusa, and then Sicily looking for somewhere with room for them to go. For the moment at least, there was an EU meeting coming up on relocating them, and he was going to have to put his foot down on this- the influx of Syrian refugees was already straining processing resources as it was.

At least PMQs had been a breeze- Labour fighting over internal direction between the different factions, the Liberals still licking their wounds- though a few more victories like Douglas and he'd need to start taking action again, and raucous cries from the Nationalists being drowned out by the equally loud ones from the Unionists. The migrants had come up again of course- no escaping them really- but the questions had been easier this time, more about logistics than strategy so he'd switched into autopilot for that.

There was no hope for that in this meeting though- Joe was firm on the matter at the best of times, and the latest interception was just adding fuel to the fire of his temper. Sometimes he longed to have Lawrence back, but he was even worse to try and negotiate with, and a Europhile to boot. Labour or Nationalists- it was like Scotland all over again!

It wouldn't, David decided, be too bad if Joe didn't seem reluctant to acknowledge how busy he was, how many things he had on his plate to try and fit into the day. Even aside from the whole business of actually running the country, leading a party and trying to be a family man, just this time he'd set aside twice, no three times now, weekly for these sorts of matters was constantly filled with different matters vying for attention. There was a final meeting with the Tuamotan Ambassador to conclude the negotiations on Pitcairn- though quite how they were going to resolve the domestic complications he didn't know. Port Stanley wanted to talk to him about the new plans for oil extraction that would need central government support, a whole string of meetings with the Pacific Islands on action to combat the effects of climate change over there; and the Americans seemed to be finding it difficult to understand that the matter of the civilian population in the Chagos Islands was an internal matter with Port Louis and that they were pushing their luck with Salomon as it was. Meanwhile he had the usual complications regarding the distribution of funding to Cardiff Bay and Aykley Heads to contend with, and it looked like the Assembly at Cockburn Town was going to have to be placed under special measures yet again- much to the delight of the satirists.

A quick glance at the clock though told him that he needed to get his thoughts in order. The troubles of an Ambassador, an army-man and a humorously named town would have to wait. For now, he was going to have to try and get a word in edgeways about why sinking boats before they left Libya wasn't really an option, let alone anything more drastic. A knock at the door provided the perfect pretext to interrupt the flow of conversation, and as his Private Secretary brought in the latest briefing from the Treasury, he turned his attention once more to the member of parliament for Rabat, Il-Mosta and Harbour West.
 
Some form of Imperial Parliament, I presume, very nice.

I have occasionally toyed with the idea of what would have happened if a few more people had voted in the 1956 Maltese Referendum.
 
Some form of Imperial Parliament, I presume, very nice.

I have occasionally toyed with the idea of what would have happened if a few more people had voted in the 1956 Maltese Referendum.

Well, it was more along the idea of having Britain and France swap places on that front- Britain integrates the various small colonies (Mauritius is one of the larger ones including Chagos and Seychelles), whereas France gets rid of them where possible (hence the breakup of French Polynesia). It's that change of attitude in the 50s that sways in Malta in 56.
 
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