I was a sixth-former when, under Britain engaged in a great patriotic effort, spearheaded by our heroic armed forces, to recapture sovereign territory.
How we lived every moment of that campaign to liberate the waking each morning desperate for news of overnight events. Every major loss was etched into the national consciousness: HMS Coventry, HMS Sheffield, the Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad. And then there were the stepping-stone victories, from South Georgia – “just rejoice at that news” – to Goose Green where Colonel H Jones made the supreme sacrifice. Thatcher herself was magnificent, fending off attempts by the Foreign Office to advance a plan for “joint sovereignty” with a thug Argentine regime.
Other countries could not fail to be impressed at the sheer nerve and daring of the retaking of the Falklands and Britain stood tall in the counsels of the world.
Four decades on and what have we come to? Under , Britain is engaged in a great anti-patriotic effort, spearheaded by leftist London lawyers, to lose sovereign territory. And to pay a king’s ransom to do so.
The transfer of the at the behest of a highly political and anti-British foreign tribunal which has no jurisdiction in the matter, is the most disgusting and anti-patriotic policy advanced by any British government in my lifetime.
It is nearly impossible to believe how it is unfolding, almost in slow motion, without anyone in politics summoning up the gumption to stop it. A question here and there from at PMQs, or from , just does not cut it. Both should be campaigning flat out to shame Starmer into abandoning this insanity.
And shame on those few Cabinet ministers with any vestiges of common sense, who should be threatening to resign rather than just briefing the that this is a rum way for Starmer to expend “political capital”.
I am put in mind of a speech by Malvolio in the Shakespeare play Twelfth Night: “My masters, are you mad? Or what are you?” And have we, the British people, had our patriotic spirits so diluted by decades of mass immigration and the denigration of our country by left-wing media that we will just let this pass?
There is no national security justification for this handover. Given that displaced Chagossians themselves have not been consulted, there is not even any happy-clappy “be nice to the natives” rationale. The idea, rushed out by a panicking Starmer, that the joint UK-US base on could not operate under continued British sovereignty is bunk. His guff about “the electromagnetic spectrum” which protects secure communications not being able to function “without a deal” is nonsense.
The implication is that a UN agency called the International Telecommunications Union might somehow suspend the laws of physics and block the transmission of electro-magnetic waves through the region. That’s a ridiculous suggestion. Even were it technically possible, the idea of it doing this to an America led by is a non-starter. And even if it did, the air base would still be more secure under ongoing British sovereignty than under a truncated “lease-back” that Mauritius will be able to veto any extension on.
And all this is before we talk about the money: the obscenity of paying £9billion or even £18billion to a tiny country that never had sovereignty over the Chagos Islands anyway, is more than 1,200 miles away from them and renounced any claim when it gained its independence from Britain.
The truth is that anti-British ideology is driving this agenda. Starmer and his lawyer chums are ashamed of our country’s past and obsessed with empowering international judicial overlords to keep us in check in the future.
The , another UN body, which suggested Mauritius should have the islands, is only authorised to issue advisory rulings on such matters. And in any case, Britain long ago expressly set aside any question of ICJ jurisdiction over “any dispute with the government of any other country which is or has been a member of the Commonwealth”, which Mauritius is.
We must consult George Orwell for the real motivation here: “England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman.”
Our country is being plundered by a clique of Hampstead radicals. patriots past, from Clement Attlee to Ernie Bevin, Hugh Gaitskell to Peter Shore, will be turning in their graves. We cannot just hope for a Trump veto here – this one is on us.
If you feel as I do then please tell your MP all about it.