This government of international lawyers, by international lawyers for international lawyers has used its own skewed and incompetent interpretations of human rights, net zero, post-colonial settlements and other international treaties to sell us out and weaken our security.
Keir Starmer, a former government lawyer approaches problems by asking what the law, Treaties and internal law requires him to do. The problem is the lawyers helping him often seem to give bad advice, advice which is also unpopular with the public.
Ceding control is an unforced error in an age of geo-economic competition. A 99-year lease won’t stop Mauritius from signing a defence treaty with China or allowing the Chinese to monitor and disrupt UK-US operations in Diego Garcia.
The region of the Indian Ocean that hosts the unique and remarkable Chagos Islands is of critical importance for wildlife. To abandon it, without enforceable safeguards for protection, risks the loss of a sanctuary that belongs not only to Britain, but to the planet.
Labour have also negotiated the Chagos deal in secret from the get go, and refused to provide answers to our questions. But we know, not from our own government, but from the Prime Minister of Mauritius that Labour kept giving them more concessions at every step.
It’s difficult even to make humorous references, because they all use words such as ‘bought’ or ‘sold’ and there’s no word for paying someone lots of money to take something valuable off you.
Before the High Court intervened, we were set to see a cowardly arrangement done in a cowardly manner: signing the deal and providing a statement to the Commons only the day before recess, scrambling to avoid real parliamentary scrutiny.
The money for the Mauritians looks likely to come from the recently announced uplift in defence spending. This rise was already insufficient; now it seems billions of it will be spent paying an ally of China to use a base we already own.
The legal advice given to the Government has been filtered through the lens of the new Attorney General and the Prime Minister, both lawyers steeped in human rights work. Philippe Sands KC, who has been close to the PM for over 20 years, had been legal counsel to Mauritius since 2010.
Can we be confident that Mauritius, which lies over 1,000 miles away, has no functioning navy, and is cosying up to China, will protect this oasis of nature?
This is especially significant since there is no indication that most former islanders want the BIOT to become part of Mauritius.
We should not shy away from facing the many unsavoury episodes of imperial history. The consequences of Britain’s historical actions are still shaping world events negatively. But that doesn’t mean the moral wrongs of our ancestors should necessarily dominate and guide our actions today.
My last Chagos piece, one year ago on 28 December 2022, expressed the hope that 2023 would be my final post and that a satisfactory conclusion to the UK/Mauritius negotiations announced in a statement on 3 November 2022 would be reached. Why the hold-up?
The longer the Government pauses, the clearer the conclusion becomes, this is a negotiation conducted in opacity, defended in haste, and now reconsidered under pressure from allies, Parliament, and its own unresolved paper trail.