We’ve lost interest in our dependencies

Let nobody say Liz Truss achieved nothing in her mayfly days at Downing Street. She gave away the vast British Indian Ocean territory, the islands and the sea around them, known as the Chagos Islands. To be more precise, in talks with Mauritian officials while in New York, she set in train negotiations with Mauritius over a handover next year. Exempted from any such agreement will be the island of Diego Garcia, nominally British but for all practical purposes under the control of the United States, who maintain a huge and important military base there, probably torturing people – but we wouldn’t know or, if we do, wouldn’t be so impertinent as to complain.

The Chagos decision is more melancholy than tragic: a complete capitulation by Britain in the face of repeated rulings against us in international law. The necessary surrender – for that is what it is – received only scant attention in our news media. We British just aren’t interested in our overseas dependencies any more. We see them as an embarrassment and a nuisance. No wonder the Falklands Islands Legislative Assembly took fright, issuing an immediate statement that the move to cede the Chagos Islands had no bearing on the status of the Falklands, and warning the government of Argentina not to read anything into it.

Technically that’s true: Britain’s position – that there will be no negotiations with Buenos Aires without the Falkland Islanders’ consent – remains unchanged. But in Port Stanley it will be noticed that the Chagossians’ future appears to be being negotiated bilaterally by Britain and Mauritius: nothing has been said about consulting the Chagossians themselves, probably now more numerous than Falklanders. Today they are scattered between Mauritius, Britain and the Seychelles, many living in poverty after their shameful expulsion from their own lands and seas by a 1960s Labour government, cap in hand to Washington.