Downing Street, the office of the UK Prime Minister, said on the record on Wednesday 15 July that the Falkland Islanders "are British with the right to determine their own future." 1 The statement answered Argentina's foreign minister and vice-president, who had spent the day framing the England semi-final around the Falkland Islands, the South Atlantic archipelago that Argentina claims and calls the Malvinas.
London rested its case on self-determination, the principle that the roughly 3,000 islanders decide their own status, a position Argentina rejects because it disputes British sovereignty in the first place. Buenos Aires had spoken through a sitting vice-president and a cabinet minister; London replied through an unnamed spokesperson reciting a line it has used for years.
The row had grown out of a football match, a semi-final England reached by beating Norway after extra time . No government recalled a diplomat or lodged a formal protest. The exchange stayed rhetorical, a sovereignty argument conducted through posts and press lines rather than through embassies, but it drew in the top of both states on the same afternoon.
