MEDDLING foreign judges demanding Britain surrender the Chagos Islands should be told to get lost, a senior Tory has blasted.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said Labour’s plan to hand the strategic Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius was “the worst deal I can ever remember”.
Robert Jenrick has said the Chagos deal is the ‘worst deal’ he can remember
Political Editor Harry Cole grilling Mr Jenrick
The agreement will see UK taxpayers hand Mauritius a reported £9billion in order to keep the military base we share with the Americans on Diego Garcia.
Sir Keir Starmer has insisted the base would be at risk if he did not comply with an advisory ruling from the International Court of Justice that backs Mauritius’ claims to the islands.
Today Downing Street claimed that a failure to comply would see a Geneva-based UN agency switch off secure satellite communications around Diego Garcia.
Letting rip on Never Mind The Ballots, Mr Jenrick slammed: “I think this is one of the worst deals that I can remember.
“We are giving away British sovereign territory to an ally of China, and we’re paying them for the privilege of doing that.
“We don’t know the precise amount, because Keir Starmer won’t be honest and come to Parliament and tell us, but we hear from the Mauritian Parliament that it could be anything from nine to 18 billion pounds.
“And bear in mind, think of what your viewers are going through at the moment.
“Times are tough. This is a government taking away people’s Winter Fuel Allowance.
“This is a government that is imposing new taxes like on farmers, so they can’t hand their
farms onto their kids and their grandkids, and at the same time, they’re finding billions and billions of pounds for this.
“And this is something that Keir Starmer could end tomorrow. I want him to come to Parliament to say that the Chagos Islands are British, they will always be British, and that these legal judgments are non-binding.”
Labour has highlighted that the first eleven rounds of negotiations were begun under the previous Tory governments.
Downing Street said the deal was imperative to securing the long-term future of the vital Diego Garcia military base.
They have offered Tory leader Kemi Badenoch as national security briefing, which she is delegating to Priti Patel.
Before the deal is signed, Britain is letting the new US administration scrutinise it, with some suggestion Donald Trump could veto the proposals.
American podcaster Natalie Winters – who is close to the White House – today said she thought it was a “horrific deal”.
She told Never Mind The Ballots: “I think that the United States, not that we’re into interventionism, but I think we should be more vocal about it, because I think it’s a really bad precedent.”
National security concerns lie behind the PM’s willingness to pay billions to Mauritius to take over the Chagos Islands Credit: Reuters Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
