Come clean on Chagos
With each passing day, Sir Keir Starmer's attempt to give away both the strategically vital Chagos Islands and a vast haul of taxpayer's money to Mauritius becomes harder to explain with anything approaching good faith.
The latest explanation – that absent a lease, the 'electromagnetic spectrum' over the islands would no longer continue to operate – appears to defy both the laws of common sense and physics. The idea that a UN agency would signal jam Diego Garcia is a non-starter.
It is alarming that this idea has been seriously suggested, and that it appears to have originated with Philippe Sands KC, a close personal friend of Sir Keir who acted for Mauritius on the Chagos matter for over a decade. It is perhaps worth noting here that Mr Sands's former colleague at Matrix Chambers, Attorney General Richard Hermer, was involved in the latest round of negotiations that saw the deal become still more favourable to Mauritius.
Besides the Government's troubling obsession with a maximalist interpretation of international law shared by few, if any, other states worldwide, it is difficult to shake off the sense of a Labour 'chumocracy' at work which, if transposed to the Conservative benches, would have triggered howls of outrage from Sir Keir.
It is now surely time for the Government to come clean on the true state of this shoddy negotiation, and publish both the draft treaty and the legal advice received so that the British people, and Parliament, can see what they have been signed up to.
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