Chagos, China, and What Was Set To Be a British Betrayal

How would you have felt about an estimated £9bn bill heading in taxpayers direction only to hand over British territory?

Because that moment almost came this morning as Sir Keir Starmer was set to, in a virtual ceremony, sign a deal surrendering sovereignty of the Chagos Islands – officially known as the British Indian Ocean Territory – to Mauritius at taxpayers’ expense.

It would have marked 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.

This would not have been new, of course. MPs seem to have found out more about the deal through a slow trickle of second-hand information from Mauritian politicians rather than actual details from the British government

But this morning a High Court judge intervened and in the eleventh hour temporarily blocked the deal after Bernadette Dugasse and Bertrie Pompe, native Chagossians, objected to the plan – and the Government has been barred from proceeding with the deal pending a further hearing later in the day.

The arrangement that was set to be signed off by former human rights lawyer Sir Keir would have given away sovereignty of the archipelago and leased back Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands which hosts the strategic British-American military base, for 99 years.

It would have marked the first significant loss of British territory since the independence of Hong Kong in 1997 – and we would have been paying for the privilege with a package of financial support.

The security risks posed by surrendering a strategic military asset to Mauritius, a close ally of China (who has always supported Mauritius’s claim to the islands, hoping to secure a foothold in the Indian Ocean) and Russia (with recently strengthened relationships on fishing and “marine research”), are well documented.

The Government maintains that the deal would strengthen national security, but the last Tory Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, concluded otherwise – and critics say it will allow Mauritian allies to build listening posts around Diego Garcia, compromising the security of the base and leaving it vulnerable to a geopolitical competitor.

The military base was first created as a way of countering Soviet power in the Indian Ocean during the Cold War, albeit in a severe manner, with medical facilities closed and supply ships withdrawn to force the 1,800 residents of the Chagos Islands to move, settling either in Crawley in West Sussex, or Mauritius.

Somehow the Mauritians have been able to successfully argue – with the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) acceptance – that Britain giving away the Chagos Islands would be an act of “decolonisation”. (That same ICJ whose vice-president in the Chagos ruling is a former Chinese government official who backed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.)

The ICJ’s finger-wagging ruling set out that Britain has an “obligation” to end its administration of the Chagos Islands – having been under British sovereignty since 1814, before which they were occupied by the French, and before that they were entirely uninhabited.

When it comes to the ownership of the Chagos Islands, Mauritius (more than 2,000km away) does not have, and never has had, sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. Why the ICJ’s non-binding ruling on the issue needs to be respected with any authority is a reasonable question to ask, at least if you’re not just putting blind faith in international law.

There had been rumours that Labour’s “decolonisation” deal was set for the scrapheap, after being branded too “toxic” by some in the party in the context of their other policy decisions (if you can afford to pay Mauritius millions of pounds a year, rising with inflation, why are you making welfare cuts at home?), but unfortunately – unlike winter fuel – it seems there is no U-turn to be found, at least from within Labour’s camp.

Instead, if the deal goes through, we would be set to pay Mauritius a hefty sum while surrendering territory; placing a 99-year lease on Diego Garcia, home to an important military base, while Mauritius will be free to lease the other islands to whomever; on the basis of an advisory opinion from the politicised judges of an international court, while native Chagossians speak of feeling “betrayed” by the decision.

Oh, and it was all set to be introduced to parliament using the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which limits MPs’ power to try and block it by setting a 21-day deadline for ratification. Unless either the Commons or Lords passed a resolution rejecting the deal within that time, it would automatically be ratified.

So there you go. Nothing questionable going on at all in Labour’s dodgy handling.