Is Sir Keir Starmer determined to make himself more unpopular with the British public? The news of his latest Chagos offer is hardly likely to endear the Prime Minister to his critics – not least given the Labour leader has reportedly offered the Mauritians yet more money and ‘complete sovereignty’ of an island containing a US naval base. Way to go, Keir!
Speaking to parliamentarians, the new Mauritian prime minister Navin Ramgoolam claimed today that Starmer cut a deal – in the presence, rather curiously, of his Attorney General Lord Hermer – that would effectively double the £9 billion first offered to the country to take back the archipelago. ‘We remain confident it will reach a speedy resolution in the coming weeks,’ the Mauritian politician asserted. The new offer will frontload payments and link them to inflation – after Ramgoolam dubbed the initial proposal a ‘sellout’. Talk about demanding, eh?
But it’s not just soaring costs that will frustrate critics. Ramgoolam told his MPs that the Labour leader will give Mauritius ‘complete sovereignty’ of Diego Garcia, home to a key US military base – despite President Trump expressing unease over Chinese influence in the area. So pressing a concern was the future of this particular island, it was the first issue raised by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Foreign Secretary David Lammy. Whether these concerns have been listened to is quite another matter…
It’s all rather odd, Mr S would suggest, that the government is spending quite so much time, effort and money trying to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to the Mauritians. Not only has Sir Keir upped the cost with his latest offer, as Mr S wrote in December there remains ambiguity over exactly how much the handover of the archipelago is likely to cost British taxpayers. Meanwhile Reform leader Nigel Farage has blasted the news on Twitter, writing: ‘This is a dreadful decision by Starmer. Our relationship will be in tatters when the USA wakes up to what our Prime Minister has done.’
As questions about financing and security pile up, Starmer is no closer to shaking off his sceptics…
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