Sir Keir Starmer has many reasons not to look forward to a Trump presidency (Image: Getty/PA )
For some extraordinary reason, which I cannot fathom personally, Sir ’s Labour government appears to be very keen to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
The UK struck a deal in October last year, still to be ratified, to hand over control of the Islands to Mauritius while retaining control of the military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, under a 99-year, or possibly 50-year, lease. And pay up to £9 billion to Mauritius for the privilege of doing so.
Why the Prime Minister seems so Hell-bent on doing this is beyond my comprehension. By way of background, the UK took control of the Chagos Islands, also known as the British Indian Ocean Territory, from its then colony, Mauritius, in 1965.
Mauritius, which became an independent state in 1968, has argued that the islands belong to it, and the UN has ruled, in an advisory opinion, that the UK’s administration of the territory is ‘unlawful’.
Hence the proposed deal. However, this has more to do with strategic military matters than it does with righting an alleged constitutional wrong.
The Chagos are located in the middle of the Indian Ocean and, as aforementioned, supports the joint USA/UK military facility on Diego Garcia, where its population of more than 1,000 people was evicted and where an airbase supports their operations in the region and the Middle East.
For example, the US used Diego Garcia as a base for its B-52 bombers attacking Iraqi forces during the 1990-91 First Gulf War.The USA, and presumably Britain as well, is keen to maintain its presence there, but the UK is also bending over backwards to satisfy the demands of the UN.
The real fear is, of course, that if the USA and UK leave and are replaced y China, already an economic ally of Mauritius, then the whole balance of power in this part of the word could change, and not for the better. Some military commentators have been quick in their condemnation of that many see as a counter-intuitive plan. As one put it, “[It is] a deal so bizarrely bad, so eerily stupid, so craven and mad, we lack a word that describes it: the act of “pointlessly giving away your property to someone who has no claim on it, while paying them heavily to take it from you”.
Others have compared it to giving the Falklands to Argentina and then paying for continued use of the islands for military and other purposes. However, in a late twist, it appears that Britain’s surrender of the Chagos is now in the balance. Starmer had appeared to want to get the deal done and dusted before next week’s inauguration of , who has been urged to intervene early in his second term to protect the Diego Garcia base.
At the same time the government of Mauritius started to drag its heels and seemed to wish to renegotiate the terms, possibly in an attempt to secure more money.
Now the Prime Minister has changed his stance, with a spokesman saying that “it was perfectly reasonable for the US administration to consider the detail” of any agreement.
The problem is that, as with so many other policy issues, nobody is quite sure what Trump’s position will be. He has not commented publicly on the matter. However, the incoming US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that it poses a “serious threat” and argues that it would give the islands to a country aligned with China.
So currently the ba’ is on the slates, as we might say. To a certain extent Starmer and company are caught between a rock and a hard place, damned if the do and damned if they don’t.
We will wait and see how it pans out. My bet is that the deal will be scrubbed and, in the face of widespread international condemnation, matters will remain as they are. But with the mercurial and unpredictable Trump back in the White House anything can happen.
Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a political and defence commentator and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts