There's rather an odd situation brewing between us and Spain, where, as is too often the case with incidents involving British overseas holdings, I feel like we're getting a bit of an unfair rap:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39475127As you may or may not know, following the end of the British Empire Britain does still own pockets of territory abroad - as is the case with most other former imperial powers. One of these is Gibraltar, a city on the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula which was ceded to us in 1713. However, since the Franco era there has been a concerted Spanish desire to see Gibraltar returned to Spain. The vast majority of Gibraltarians - as has been confirmed in referendums - consider themselves British and absolutely want to remain under British rule, but this isn't important to the Spanish, nor to the number of British people who - as is also true with the Falklands - seem to feel we should give Gibraltar to Spain despite them having no legitimate claim to it and against the wishes of its inhabitants, presumably out of some sort of guilt for the days of the empire.
The current flashpoint is that the EU are demanding that any Brexit negotiations involving Gibraltar have to be run past Spain - a suggestion the Gibraltarians are appalled by, and which is simply ridiculous: Spain actually have as much of a claim to Gibraltar as, for example, Mexico does to California. But this situation has been made worse by Lord Howard, a former leader of the Conservatives, saying that Theresa May would be prepared to defend Gibraltar as much as Thatcher was the Falklands. This is of course over-the-top, but the Spanish government and other British parties have rounded on it as if the daft ramblings of a former party leader somehow represent the thinking of the current government.
But this does have a similarity to the Falklands, in that it is appalling the number of British people who feel comfortable saying that it's somehow imperialist for us to want to defend the interests of our people, just because those people happen to live in a territory that another country has a weak claim to. People in Scotland and Wales say they don't get enough support from Westminster, but I think one really has to be a resident of somewhere like Gibraltar or the Falklands to see just how little of a shit some of our politicians are willing to give about those citizens that live a long way away, that they would actually suggest completely taking away your sovereignty and forcing you to become a citizen of a country you don't want to be, for the sake of some vague and ill-informed notion of historical guilt.