Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy are reportedly on the verge of writing a cheque for hundreds of millions of pounds to Mauritius.
Surely, you may say, these exalted statesmen must have a good reason for shelling out so much cash to a foreign government. Actually, no, they don’t. There is no case at all.
And yet the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary seem determined to fling public money at the undeserving Mauritians. Not only that. In so doing they are likely to weaken the West, and enhance Chinese power.
In the nearly six months since Labour took over, we have witnessed a depressing number of self-inflicted wounds. It’s arguable, though, that this particular Starmer/Lammy farce exceeds in sheer stupidity anything we’ve seen before. Naivety, weakness and ignorance have combined.
A bit of background. In October it was announced that an agreement had been reached with the Mauritian government. Britain would hand over an undisclosed sum of money in return for a 99-year lease to maintain the strategically important Anglo-American air base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands.
Many scratched their heads in wonderment. In the first place, Mauritius renounced any claim over the Chagos Islands in 1965 on becoming independent, and accepted a settlement of £3 million.
It is in no position to grant a lease in respect of Diego Garcia because it has already ceded it.
Note that the Chagos Islands are more than 1,300 miles away from Mauritius in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Both colonised by the French, they have nothing else in common. In 1814 France was obliged to hand over Mauritius to the British with the islands thrown in as a job lot.
The Chagos Islands are made up of seven atolls, comprising more than 60 individual islands, south of the Maldives archipelago
When Starmer and Lammy welcomed their fatuous deal three months ago, it was pointed out that tiny Mauritius (population 1.2 million) is an ally of China. A 99-year lease on Diego Garcia might not be cast iron. Besides, Mauritius will gain sovereignty over the other Chagos Islands under the agreement. It might allow China to build its own base.
Little wonder that Donald Trump‘s camp is unhappy about a deal that could jeopardise the future of an important base, which is run by the Americans rather than the British. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State-designate, has said that it poses a ‘serious threat’ to US National Security.
Believe it or not, the agreement unveiled in early October is now in doubt, though not because Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Lammy have woken up to the error of their ways. The new prime minister of Mauritius, Navinchandra Ramgoolam, claims the terms aren’t good enough, and must be renegotiated.
You’d think this would be seen by the Labour Government as a heaven-sent opportunity to tear up a deal that is injurious to British, American and Western interests. But you would be overestimating the good sense of these two titans of diplomacy.
The new Mauritian government is reportedly demanding an annual payment of £800 million from Britain plus billions of pounds in reparations (for what exactly?) in return for granting a lease in respect of an island half an ocean away over which it doesn’t have sovereignty.
If any practitioners of the three-card trick are reading this piece, they might think about getting Messrs Starmer and Lammy in a corner. There’s a lot of easy money to be made out of these two chumps.
Even a former Foreign Office mandarin well-schooled in the arts of surrender has suggested that the amounts of money sought by Mr Ramgoolam are steep. Lord McDonald has publicly advised Sir Keir Starmer not to dole out huge sums.
That’s not the end of it. It is reported – and accepted by Lord McDonald – that the Government hopes to renegotiate the deal before President Trump takes office on January 20. The idea is to present him with a fait accompli. Bad luck, Donald. You’ve lost your base, or at any rate got it on a 99-year lease, and we’ll dig deeper into our pockets.
The largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, is the site of a joint UK-US military base
Can you imagine anything more short-sighted? Imposing a deal on Trump that he’s known to dislike is hardly going to predispose the hot tempered and mercurial President in Starmer’s and Lammy’s favour.
By the way, I haven’t mentioned that a key figure on our negotiating team is Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair‘s former chief of staff, who has somehow morphed into the Government’s National Security Adviser, an important role for which I’d say he is ill qualified. Mr Powell is a serpentine customer who is also practised in Foreign Office surrender techniques.
In all the annals of guilt-ridden, knee-bending, cringing diplomacy has any British government ever surpassed what Starmer and Lammy are cooking up?
There is another aspect about which neither the British nor the Mauritian governments seem properly concerned. I mean the fate of the Chagossians, who were displaced in 1968 when the British and Americans decided they wanted a base.
Nearly a thousand people were evicted from Diego Garcia, and hundreds from the smaller islands, by the then Labour government to make way for the base. However reasonable the cause, this was a draconian policy, which I should have thought indefensible in morality or international law.
Some 10,000 Chagossians are now scattered in Mauritius, the Seychelles and this country. No one gives much thought to their fate. Certainly not Sir Keir Starmer or David Lammy, while Mr Ramgoolam and other Mauritian politicians appear more interested in extracting as much money as possible from the British than in a just settlement for the Chagossians.
‘There’s a lot of easy money to be made out of these two chumps,’ says Stephen Glover of Keir Starmer and his Foreign Secretary David Lammy
Nor did the Chagossians weigh heavily with the International Court of Justice, which in 2019 ruled that at the time of independence Mauritius was coerced by Britain into giving up the Chagos Islands. This was judged to be in breach of a UN resolution passed in 1960 prohibiting the break-up of colonies before independence.
It was this judgment that spooked the querulous Foreign Office, though it was advisory rather than binding.
Yet, as we have seen, the idea that Mauritius and the Chagos Islands ever formed a homogeneous colony is absurd, given that they are so far apart, and had almost nothing culturally in common.
This is no more than an opportunistic bid by Mauritius, backed by Third World countries that delight in waving the fraying flag of anti-colonialism, to squeeze cash out of a weak-minded British Government.
The Chagos Islands are far away. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary probably calculate that voters are unlikely to get worked up by a disadvantageous deal with Mauritius. If so, they could be fatally wrong.
People will resent hundreds of millions of pounds of precious public money going to an undeserving government of a tiny country in a bad cause. They won’t relish China being the ultimate beneficiary.
How foolish are the hapless diplomatic duo of Starmer and Lammy. The best hope is that Navinchandra Ramgoolam will overplay his hand, and so there’ll be no deal before Trump enters the White House.
In which case the new President should suggest to Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy that they start behaving like grown-ups, and take the West’s interests seriously.