Sir Keir Starmer has been forced to pull his Chagos Island Bill in the wake of an American backlash over the deal, leaving the treaty’s fate hanging in the balance. The Telegraph has the story.
The legislation was expected to be debated in the House of Lords on Monday, but was delayed on Friday night after the Conservatives warned it could violate a 60 year-old treaty with America enshrining British sovereignty over the archipelago.
It comes after Donald Trump turned against the Chagos deal earlier this week, saying that Britain’s plan to hand the Indian Ocean territory ot Mauritius was “an act of great stupidity”.
Donald Trump posted a rebuke of Starmer’s plans on Truth Social on January 20th
Under the terms of Sir Keir’s deal, the UK will give up the archipelago and lease back the Diego Garcia military base, a facility built there in the 1970s that has been used by UK and US forces.
But the Tories had warned the agreement would break a treaty between the UK and the US that dates back to 1966, that asserts Britain’s sovereignty over the islands.
Ministers confirmed in late December that the two nations were engaging in talks about updating the 1966 agreement in light of the new Chagos deal but the talks have not been completed.
On Friday morning the Conservatives tabled a motion in the House of Lords calling for the ratification of the treaty be delayed to allow the talks to conclude to avoid breaching international law.
Legislation underpinning the agreement was expected to return to the Lords on Monday for Parliamentary ‘ping pong’.
But the Telegraph can reveal that it will no longer be returning to the upper chamber as planned.
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said the deal could “not progress while this issue remains unsolved”.
She said: “Throughout the Chagos debates, Keir Starmer has tried to hide behind the cover of international law, now the Conservatives are exposing that his shameful surrender may be illegal.”
They laughed at me when I said Chagos would become one of the major issues of this Parliament, but it has now appeared in Keir Starmer’s rear-view mirror like a looming juggernaut. It’s an issue that I believe could yet bulldoze the Government.
I put down questions after the election to the newly burnished Starmerite lieutenants, enquiring as to their intentions for the British Indian Ocean territory. Their answers were characteristically deceptive – and in the year and a half since, ministers have continued to act both incompetently and disingenuously. And now their entire Chagos plan has exploded like a bunker buster dropped on Labour HQ.
The Prime Minister only has himself to blame. He ignored the many opponents to this bizarre deal, even as their voices grew louder – whether in the public, in the media, or in the House of Lords – where all opposition parties and the crossbenchers have expressed reservations about the Bill to implement his treaty.
Worst of all, Starmer has sidelined the Chagossians themselves, many of whom want to remain British and who are fighting heroically to stop this deal.
Now the world has heard from the one person the Prime Minister cannot ignore. I am tempted to say it may be a case of better late than never: but, joking aside, Donald Trump has completely kiboshed Starmer’s sell-out deal, which he called an “act of great stupidity”. Like a B2 emerging from the heat haze above the runway at Diego Garcia, the US president imploded Starmer’s plan in one brutal sortie, whatever No 10 might say.
Firstly, Trump’s statements on Chagos are an effective veto because even though the UK and Mauritius have signed a bilateral treaty, it has not yet been ratified. Even if the relevant legislation passes in Parliament (and it likely will, with Labour’s majority), the US was not a party to that treaty.
The military base on Diego Garcia, one of the islands within the Chagos archipelago at the heart of this debate, is a joint US-UK military facility. It is infeasible that the UK will now implement the treaty without the approval of the US – that bilateral deal between the UK and Mauritius has been negotiated without American engagement in any of the details.
[…]
That leads to my second reason: it is implausible that ministers will now push forward with implementing the deal, because the situation is taken so seriously in Washington DC that the Americans could withdraw elements of intelligence cooperation with the United Kingdom.
[…]
Thirdly, there are many rational reasons to listen to Trump’s concerns. He is, after all, the Commander-in-Chief of our closest military ally. The US president said: “There is no doubt China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness.” This is directly at odds with Starmer’s absurd claim that those countries in fact opposed his deal – as I have pointed out all along, hostile states were thrilled with Labour’s actions
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