QUENTIN LETTS on Commons Chagos Islands query: Tories rushed in, prepared for an additional calamity from Keir’s hit manufacturing facility
YET another Commons urgent question on the Chagos Islands. Labour MPs skedaddled just as Tories rushed to enter the chamber. This created what police call ‘traffic-flow management challenges’.
Defence minister Luke Pollard began his speech with only six Labour MPs on parade. Just three of them wished to contribute. Tories were out in force, however, as was Nigel Farage,all rubbing their knees and enjoying the Starmer Government’s calamities.
Chagos: another corker from the hit factory that brought you iced pensioners, farm protests and THAT Budget!
Until a few weeks ago most MPs, if asked to locate the Chagos isle of Diego Garcia on a map, might have pointed to the Canaries. It is, in fact, in the Indian Ocean and has for 50 years been a UK-USA air base. Islanders were evicted c.1970 and many moved to the quasi-tropical paradise of Crawley, West Sussex, where they were minding their business until Sir Keir Starmer rushed into a deal to give the islands to distant Mauritius. Why did he do that? Post-colonial guilt. By mere coincidence one of Sir Keir’s best chums was acting as lawyer for Mauritius.
Joe Biden was all for Sir Keir’s hand-wringing gambit but Donald Trump’s people are allegedly v. cross. A new government in Mauritius has also turned against the deal.
Sir Keir is in the odd position of being unable to give an archipelago away. Now he knows how electric-car dealers feel.
The Tories suspected that Sir Keir will hurriedly offer to pay millions more to Mauritius to loan this airfield we already own – anything to get the matter resolved before scary Mr Trump returns to power on January 20.
James Cartlidge, shadow defence secretary, said Diego Garcia was ‘critical to our peace and posture’. Defence people love to talk of posture. So did my yoga teacher, Harold, until my London gym closed.
Defence minister Luke Pollard insisted that the current deal was ‘good’
The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands (formerly the Oil Islands) is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom situated in the Indian Ocean, halfway between Africa and Indonesia
The Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean and has for 50 years been a UK-USA air base
Mr Pollard, who has an enviably upright bearing even if his Government lacks a spine, insisted that the current deal was ‘good’. The Opposition laughed. Those six Labour MPs stared at their sandals.
Beside Mr Pollard sat Stephen Doughty, foreign office minister in charge of our few square miles of the Indian Ocean. There is something of the late Roy Kinnear to Mr Doughty: a faintly sweaty, feverish appearance, prone to twitches and gaseous whinnies.
Mr Doughty is normally the poor sap lumbered with Chagos Island urgent questions – David Lammy has learned to avoid them – but this time it was the turn of the more urbane Pollard.
Tan Singh Dhesi (Lab, Slough), who by some freak of nature has become chairman of the defence committee, announced that Diego Garcia was a jolly important asset. Though true, this was not a revelation. Mr Dhesi’s defence expertise may be based on a few evenings with the board-game L’Attaque.
The only Labour MP bendy enough to ask a Whip’s-nark question was Mark Sewards (Leeds SW and Morley) who marvelled that we would not be giving away the Falklands or Gibraltar.Peter Lamb (Lab) was less impressed. He, you see, is MP for the aforesaid paradise of Crawley. His Chagossian constituents hate Sir Keir’s deal even more than Mr Trump does. The only people who seem to like the blessed deal are the Chinese, who – thanks to their allies in Mauritius – may soon set up listening posts on lumps of Chagos coral reef near the Diego Garcia runway.
Mr Farage, whose Clacton-on-Sea constituency is almost as remote and palm-fringed as the Chagos Islands, noted that ‘Joe Biden is going – many think he’s already gone’. Mr Farage’s friends in the Trump circle thought the Chagos giveaway ‘a rotten deal’, we were told.
Priti Patel, shadow foreign secretary, kept squawking ‘they gave it away!’ at ministers.
Mr Pollard, in solidarity with certain other Indian Ocean islands, started to sink. And Jim Shannon (DUP, Strangford) waved a white flag. Succinct? On closer inspection it turned out merely to be an enormous hanky with which old Jim proceeded to dab his nose.
