Libertad o Muerte

Her Majesty's Realms of Belize and Jamaica are members of the Rio Group, as is Guyana, which also has very close historic ties to Britain. If any one or more of them has recognised some Argentine claim to the Falkland Islands, then we have only ourselves to blame for favouring American hegemony and its pet project, the EU, over the Commonwealth.

Our engagement with the Americas should be as an American state, in that sense, six times over, since the Falkland Islands, Bermuda, Anguilla, Montserrat, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and the Turks & Caicos Islands are each and all British by choice, whatever the United States or anyone else might think. Two more American states, Dominica and Trinidad & Tobago, retain the right of appeal to a body drawn from the High Court of Parliament at Westminster, and lucky them, since we no longer have any such right here. (Engagement with Africa should also be as an African state in right of Saint Helena and Her Dependencies, while Mauritius retains that right of appeal.)

Why would anyone expect any American President to side with the imperial power, as such, against which his republic defined itself, never mind in such a way as would scupper trade deals with his near abroad, possibly cause Hispanics to riot in the streets, certainly damage him in the eyes of what is now that massive voting bloc (which it wasn't in 1982), and cause him to be branded "Benedict Arnold" by neoconservative enemies of "the Anglophile network" for both Irish-American and Zionist reasons, including those close to a Secretary of State who still covets his job? The neocons' attitude was perfectly encapsulated and expressed by one of their great heroines, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the last time round. Paleocons and others who would not wish to identify with Kirkpatrick and her admirers should consider their own position accordingly, even if we are talking about the land of the Redcoats.

Meanwhile, where this dispute is concerned, which way will Uruguay jump? Belgium is sometimes said to have been set up by the British in order to annoy the French, which would endear her to those most loudly cheering Farage tonight if they knew anything. But Uruguay really was created by Britain specifically not to be Argentina. Those on the Falklands requiring serious medical attention are taken to Montevideo to this day. Ongoing developments are strongly redolent of Peronist and kindred tendencies. Greater Argentina doesn't just mean no more British Falkland Islands. Greater Argentina also means no more Uruguay.

And such a movement across the continent means no more Queen of Belize, because it means no more Belize, only Greater Guatemala.