Broadly speaking, there are two responses to Keir Starmer’s surrender of the Chagos Islands. The first is indignation. This is sovereign British territory and yet the Prime Minister has handed it over to a foreign country. The constitutional scholar Yuan Yi Zhu asserts that this decision ‘cannot be defended on any authoritative legal grounds’, and nor does it make much political sense. In exchange for being gifted territory that has never been under its sovereignty, the Republic of Mauritius has agreed to lease the Diego Garcia military base to the UK for the modest sum of £101 million a year for the next 99 years. The UK government has arranged for Britain to lose land and gain a landlord. Starmer wouldn’t be the first prime minister to sell out his country, but he might very well be the first to pay a foreign power to take part of his country off his hands.
Which brings us to the other response: why do you care? This is a common tactic from progressives when they adopt a position out of negative partisanship and are unwilling or unable to defend it intellectually. Why are you so obsessed with this? When was the last time you said anything about it? This is super weird, dude! Those who take this view are, of course, perfectly entitled to do so, but if you are one of them, what follows is not for you. It begins from the assumption that Britain should retain British territory and that it is not only super weird but super unpatriotic to think otherwise. Yes, I know, ‘patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel’, but at least the scoundrel can bring himself to affect patriotism. The progressive gets so much ick from patriotism that his consistent preference is for adverse outcomes for Britain.
Losing territory on specious legal grounds – territory that hosts a joint UK-US military base – is a decidedly adverse outcome, but there isn’t much that can be done at this point. Parliament could refuse to ratify the Starmer surrender but the government’s majority makes that unlikely. Reform and the Conservatives could, in theory, withhold payments to Mauritius if they form a government one day, though whether doing so would be lawful or politically sustainable is another matter. So unless a future government can get Mauritius to sign the territory back over in exchange for a fair old whack of cash, or is prepared to launch – and win – a war to retake the islands, the British Indian Ocean Territory is gone and gone forever.
Opponents of Starmer’s surrender should look instead to legislative mechanisms that would make further territorial transfers more difficult. The search for an answer must begin with the origin of the Chagos handover: Starmer, or rather what he represents, which is a governing class that doesn’t much like the country it governs. A many-headed hydra of MPs, civil servants, academics, lawyers, activists and journalists who make a fetish of their post-colonial neuroses and a doctrine of their post-national impulses, hiding their ideological preferences behind legalistic neutrality. Rule of law, mate. International reputation, innit? Soft power, yeah?
If the Chagos is to become the model for separating the UK from its territories, how can a rerun be prevented? It might be helpful to consider how they do things in Israel, a country where political elites’ determination to give away territory can bring grave consequences for national security and human life, as seen in the 20 years since Ariel Sharon’s government disengaged from Gaza. Wishing to prevent a repeat in the West Bank, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed the Referendum Law in 2014. It states that any government wishing to ‘sign an agreement, according to which the law, jurisdiction and administration of the State of Israel shall no longer apply to territory in which they currently apply’ must win the support of two-thirds of the Knesset — or put the matter to a referendum.
Reform and the Tories should draft similar legislation for the UK. A Keep Britain United Bill could require a two-thirds affirmative vote in the House of Commons before any territory held by the UK could lawfully be transferred to another sovereign. Where that benchmark cannot be achieved, ministers would be required to hold a referendum of the whole UK electorate. This should apply where the government proposes to cede sovereignty over any part of the UK or a British Overseas Territory or to alter the Crown’s relationship with dependent territories.
On these terms, a two-thirds parliamentary majority or UK-wide referendum would be necessary before changing the constitutional status of, say, the Falkland Islands or the Crown’s role vis-a-vis the Isle of Man. The same provisions would apply to any nation or region of the UK. Indeed, the case for a plebiscite is even stronger in these circumstances because the secession of a part of the UK would represent a fundamental change in the political, constitutional or territorial character of the country.
The British public are infinitely more patriotic than Downing Street or the Foreign Office
Oh, you might say, but they’d just ignore the referendum result if it didn’t go their way, just like they tried to do with Brexit. They certainly did try it with Brexit, and perhaps they’d try it with a No vote on handing Gibraltar over to Spain. Referendums are not binding upon parliament unless parliament legislates to make them so. But forcing them to hold a plebiscite on the latest guilt-expiating post-colonial fad, making them expend political capital explaining to the voters why Britain is in the wrong again, would be a bruising experience in much the same way as the EU referendum debate. The prospect might be enough to deter them from doing another Chagos.
It’s not a perfect solution. There are problems practical: would such legislation be compatible with the UK’s obligations under the Belfast Agreement? And problems philosophical: objectionable though the surrender of British territory might be, legislation on the above terms would mark a significant departure from the constitutional status quo. It would also be populist. Populism is in right now but, whether put in service of progressive or conservative ends, it is always a debasing force. The demos needs to be restrained every bit as much as the polis.
The demos, however, is not burdened by the same melange of self-loathing and self-righteousness that makes the governing class a thoroughly malign actor. The British public are infinitely more patriotic than Downing Street or the Foreign Office – a low bar, it must be said – and it is reasonable to assume that their lack of innate hostility towards the UK renders them more likely to make rational, self-interested decisions about territory in a way the governing class seemingly cannot. Populism invariably debases but it might be the only brake on an elitism bent on betrayal.
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