It time for another U - turn , Sir Keir : your abject Chagos surrender

yahoo.com · Feb 21, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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Now we see what his ideological motor is, the belief that drives him in politics. Sir Keir Starmer has about-turned on pretty much everything else. But he is determined, almost to the point of clinical psychosis, to give away British territory.The Prime Minister has performed 15 major reversals since the election. He has no strong views on whether we should cap child benefit or pay a winter allowance to pensioners. He is indifferent on whether we should join the EU customs union. He does not much care whether farmers pay inheritance tax. Should Israel blockade Gaza? Should utilities be nationalised? Should local elections be cancelled? Meh.But when it comes to handing the Chagos Islands to a country that has never governed them, the man is unstoppable. The single-mindedness with which Starmer has sped past every off-ramp is a thing of wonder. It was clear from the start that there was almost no support in Britain for paying to exchange a freehold for a lease. Labour MPs were bewildered, Left-wing columnists baffled and, we read, Starmer’s No 10 advisers horrified. No one, they told their boss, would understand why we were raising taxes in Britain to fund tax cuts in Mauritius.Again and again, Starmer was presented with opportunities to walk away. A new administration in Washington was sceptical of the deal. But he poured his energies into talking it around, sending his National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, to convince US officials.A new government in Mauritius was likewise hesitant. Again, Powell was sent, dripping with Olympian disdain. “These are very tiny islands”, he told an interviewer. “I don’t think we should be too worried about losing that bit of territory. We’re probably losing more to tidal erosion... than that.”Mauritius, sensing that Starmer was committed to the handover, began to raise its price, demanding that the payments be front-loaded. Again, Starmer had a perfect opportunity to end the talks; again, he ploughed ahead.It is hard to stress quite how out of character his stubbornness is. As a senior Labour official recently explained: “Keir travelled very lightly. He never defined himself, and when he came in, he was defined by events.”One of his Downing Street aides put it more damningly: “Keir has never met a policy that he had a natural view on. That’s why he’s capable of thinking that ID cards are terrible and then ID cards are wonderful and must be compulsory and then that they mustn’t be compulsory.”Not, though, when it comes to Chagos. Here, the Prime Minister is like a trooper of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, charging at the cannons even as all around him are blasted from their mounts, even as it dawns on him that they are the wrong guns. Ours not to reason why, ours just to pay and sigh.When pressed on why they are pushing ahead so dementedly, government officials tell you, sotto voce, that the Americans want the deal. Yes, they concede, the International Court of Justice’s decision is merely declaratory. Yes, it has no jurisdiction in disputes between Commonwealth states. Yes, there is an exemption for military installations. Yes, Mauritius trousered a large sum for permanently renouncing any claim in 1965. Yes, diaspora Chagossians hate the deal. And, yes, it would mean handing a pristine marine conservation area to a country with a poor record on biodiversity. But the US cousins want the deal, and it is in practice their base.1906 How far Chagos military base is from IranWell, that may have been the position of the Biden administration, with its dislike of little pink dots on the map. But it is not the view of Donald Trump. “Prime Minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100-year lease,” declared the president on Wednesday. “This land should not be taken away from the UK and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our great ally.”The last remaining rationale for the deal, namely that it would strengthen our most important alliance, has collapsed. Far from pleasing the Americans, we are advertising our unreliability. Not only Trump, but plenty of American generals, feel they have been misled. There never was an imminent legal threat to the archipelago.The claim that Britain was “weeks away” from losing jurisdiction was false, and ministers who made it at the Dispatch Box in Parliament, including John Healey, the Defence Secretary, seem to have misled Parliament. Nor was there much awareness in DC of the legal implications of handing the islands to a nuclear-free country.That the Americans now understand these things is thanks to the efforts of several British patriots acting privately. While the Conservative spokesman, Lord Callanan, expertly dragged things out in the Upper House, others lobbied their American contacts. Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch, Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Dame Priti Patel have all made the case.Donald Trump said it may be necessary for the US to use Diego Garcia to prevent a ‘potential attack’ by Iran - AFP via Getty ImagesThe Great British PAC – a coalition of patriotic experts – has funded the Chagossians’ legal challenges. Retired generals have been having urgent conversations with their American counterparts. The US ambassador, Warren Stephens, has behaved with exemplary sense, tact and patriotism. All, in short, have been doing what the official organs of the British state should have been doing, and would have been doing had they not been captured by the Starmer/Lord Hermer obsession with surrendering to foreign courts.Meanwhile, the Chagossians themselves, tired of being treated as NPCs, have proclaimed a government in exile. In a daring and dramatic move, they have crossed hundreds of miles of empty ocean, guided by the former Conservative MP and special forces officer Adam Holloway, to land on one of the outer atolls and establish a settlement. An inhabited territory is much harder to give away.Hence the extraordinary spectacle of a Labour government, which is unable to stop small boats in the Channel, moving heaven and earth to evict British citizens from British territory. Come to Britain as a foreigner and you will be given food, accommodation and a weekly spending allowance. Return to your ancestral lands as a British subject and you will be served with a removal order.Now we see what happens when an obsession with international law overrides considerations of decency and practicality. Rule by human rights lawyers turns out to be remarkably inhumane.It is suggested that Trump’s missive, coming hours after a state department declaration backing the handover, was prompted by irritation at being told that he could not use British bases to bomb Iran – perhaps not Diego Garcia, where there has always been an implicit understanding that the Americans could use their own facilities, but RAF bases in Britain and Cyprus.My own sense is that opposition to the Chagos surrender in the White House goes much deeper. Still, it is telling that Britain, which the ayatollahs rank behind only Israel and America as their chief foe, is unwilling to act in support of the Iranian people as they push for a more representative government. Once again, international law contravenes not only our national interest but justice.When we hide behind law codes, we make ourselves irrelevant, a ghost country, unseen and unheeded, scorned in both Washington and Tehran. That is the real consequence of being governed by the Doughty Street/Matrix Chambers nexus. When we bundle Starmer out of the door, we must throw his supranationalist obsessions out with him. Never again should we let the country be run by human rights lawyers.Try full access to The Telegraph free today. Unlock their award-winning website and essential news app, plus useful tools and expert guides for your money, health and holidays.