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Chagos baffles me Can someone explain to me why the Tories opened negotiations with Mauritius over the control of Chagos, which was never part of Mauritius and whose inhabitants have never wanted to be part of Mauritius? And can someone explain why Labour wants to pay Mauritius to take over territory it never previously owned at any point in history?
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I think that it is pretty obvious that the reason that Labour wants to give/sell/transfer Diego Garcia to Mauritius is because it will harm America’s strategic position. That is all the excuse that they need.
Baroness Chapman makes it clear that the gifting has all been done to increase the UK’s national security.
So, if you’re questioning it at all, you must be some lowlife traitor!
(It’s funny (to me) that the new Lords motion would mostly just put in a 21-day cooling-off period before the transfer could be effected, but they’re calling that the “fatal motion.”
Seems more likely (to me) that Trump’s objections are controlling this process – maybe ending this process – but Starmer will not be forced to grant Trump credit for that much power over the UK – almost as if Lords was giving Starmer a face-saving “out.”)
Can someone explain to me why the Tories opened negotiations with Mauritius over the control of Chagos, which was never part of Mauritius and whose inhabitants have never wanted to be part of Mauritius?
Because that is what the Foreign Office told them to do.
To be fair to Kemi, there are hints that she appreciates that nothing can be done without first demolishing the new Blairite constitutional order, where the apparat controls all. But less sign that she appreciates that that same apparat controls a majority of her MPs.
Starmer wanted to give Diego Garcia to China. Mauritius is a vassal of the PRC, and Starmer is, too.
As usual, this all reduces to brain damage, for me; and this view is not incompatible with the comments above.
Not that i claim to be immune from brain damage, but at least i am aware of the problem.
To answer Perry’s question – the answer is “because that is what the officials and experts told ministers to do”. That was the agenda of the Progressive “International Community”, the “educated” people (for example Lord Hermer).
There was some resistance (by “the Tories”) to the officials and “experts” – till the election of 2024 when people such as Sir Keir Starmer and Lord Hermer became the elected government, people who shared the world-view of the officials and experts – the world-view of the International Community (the unelected government).
I have pointed all this out – many times before now.
By the way – the forces of the international establishment are also very strong (very strong indeed) in the United States – hence, for example, the overturning of the votes (by the people) in California to restrict welfare payments and services to illegal immigrants, and the vote by the people for the State not to recognize “Gay Marriage”. The people were allowed to vote against these things (these days the vote would be rigged) – but the judges overruled the people. The judges reasoned that eventually indoctrination by the education system and the media would correct the views of the people – which seems to be the case.
Democracy exists in Western nations in the sense that they have elections, but the international establishment (such as the judges) do not allow the people to make decisions that oppose the world-view of the Progressive International Community – the British vote for independence in 2016 is a good example of this, the people voted for independence from the European Union, but got meaningless “Brexit” instead. The Progressive International Community has the same view of democracy that Rousseau had – i.e. that people are only allowed the Progressive “General Will” NOT the Reactionary “Will of All” – which is why the Law Giver will overrule Reactionary impulses, till the Education System has indoctrinated people to accept Progressive doctrine (on sexual or other matters).
President Trump rejects the view of the Progressive International Community on the Chagos Islands – and on many other matters, which is why they seek to destroy him. Even the news broadcasts of “GB News” (the only conservative television station in Britain) are absurdly biased against him – for example presenting an armed terrorist in Minneapolis as an innocent victim.
If there was a “Prime Minister Farage” the officials and judges and so on, of the Progressive International Community, would treat him in the same way they treat Prime Minister Orban – i.e. they would seek to remove him.
Perhaps via some “Colour Revolution” – which the new Governor of Virginia knows about, due to her previous employment in the Central Intelligence Agency. And is moving to enforce the agenda of the Progressive International Community by, for example, removing all conservatives from the governing bodies of universities and the education system (returning it to being a Progressive Indoctrination system – very Rousseau), banning the hand counting of votes and pushing electronic voting – so that all future elections are rigged.
Congress refuses to even end funding of the “National Endowment for Democracy” (whose aim is to destroy democracy in the sense of governments who do not follow the agenda of the Progressive International Community) – citing “the filibuster rule” as an excuse for not doing so.
To paraphrase The Ape from C S Lewis’s “The Last Battle”: “You think self-determination means getting the sovereign you want. You are wrong. That is not true self-determination. True self-determination means getting the sovereign the UN Committee on Decolonization thinks you should have”.
The International Community believes that elections only need to be rigged if the people vote for reactionary policies – and this is not a recent point of view, for example the Times (of London) newspaper in 1968 (when it was very much the newspaper of the establishment in Britain) denounced the speech of J. Enoch Powell (expressing sentiments supported by the vast majority of the British people) as “evil” – in short the establishment (even then) regarded the British people as “evil” (their word) and wished to undermine them.
Ideally the undermining (“enlightenment”) is to be done by indoctrination by the education system and media – but demographic change is also used, as in California where many conservatives have left the State in despair and have been replaced by illegal immigrants, who illegally vote.
The establishment clearly does not like the national populations of Europe, North American and Australasia (Australia and New Zealand) – perhaps these populations have shown resistance to being “enlightened” by the education system and the media, and so the Progressive International Community (the “educated” people – including the top Corporate people, for it is, in a broad sense, a Corporate State) have decided that these populations need to be replaced.
This Progressive process is already well underway – both by reducing the fertility of the national populations, and by mass immigration and the natural increase of the invited in (and they were invited in) new populations.
Alan Peakall – yes indeed.
For example, anyone who thinks the United Nations (or the international Corporate State establishment, “International Community”, generally) believes in the self-determination of European (“white” – really pinkish gray) populations is deeply mistaken – United Nations documents hold that European nations have no indigenous populations – no native populations. And, therefore, that these peoples (the English, French, Germans, Dutch….. and so on) have no right of self determination – because they do not exist.
The international establishment hold that European populations (including Europeans in the Americas and in Australian and New Zealand) are too “individualistic” for the Collectivist future – and so must be eliminated, hence the pushing of feminism, contraception, abortion, destruction of the family, and-so-on – as well as the encouraged of mass immigration.
At this point the process has been going on so long, and is so far advanced, it is difficult to see how Europeans will survive as national peoples.
They probably will not survive.
Will the Henri Saint-Simon style system that the international establishment support – work? Will it function over the long term?
Of course not, it will be a disaster – but they are going to do it anyway.
I understand that Britain paid a shedload of millions of Pounds to Mauritius for the Chagos Islands, quite a few years ago. If true, then Chagos is a British territory, just like Alaska is part of the USA, having bought it from Russia. Only a moronic numpty like Starmer would pay a country to take back what they have already been paid for. The only reason I can think of is his, alleged master, Xi Jing Ping Pong has told him to do just that. Willing to be corrected.
If Labour wants to save some money, I’ll take over Chagos for half of what Mauritius is asking, as long as I can telecommute & don’t have to wear a tie.
Yeah, I know. Just imagine, Labour wanting to save money!
Daniel Hannan has argued that it’s part of the oikaphobia of the human rights lawyers and student union pricks in the government who only see the Union Jack as a flag to be pulled down. Never mind British strategic considerations.
A terrible, dark thought I have is that Labour has been rolled by Beijing. The new big Chinese embassy in London, etc. Chagos fits. Indian Ocean sea lanes and projection of power. Mauritius is awash with Chinese money into and from Africa.
What times to be alive.
From my understanding several international legal proceedings had gone against Britain regarding the Chagos Islands. Not that this really obliged Britain to give the islands to Mauritius. But many recent British governments, Tory or Labour, have put great stress on the importance of ‘international law’ and frequently justified it’s foreign policy on the grounds of upholding international law against those who break it, be it Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Vladimir Putin, etc. It is easy to see how a bunch of civil servants were able to talk Tory ministers into beginning negotiations with Mauritius, saying how important it was for Britain to be following what currently constitutes ‘international law’ and so on, and as the recent fiasco over Alaa Abd El-Fattah showed, most British politicians don’t do the research, they seem to trust their civil servants and aides have done it for them.
As for the China link, well BoJo was trying only four years ago to make a trade deal with China, and was a long term advocate of a free trade deal with China.
Johnathan Pearce and Martin.
Both the present government and Alexander Boris Johnson reject the traditional definition of “Free Trade” as meaning paying for imports with exports – both believe in the modern system (certainly NOT advocated by Adam Smith or A.L. Perry or any of the old Free Trade economists) of “paying” for imports (from China) with “money” created from nothing.
The other day I was trying (with my old brain – I really should be sent to the knackers yard, well time for me to be dead) to remember who thought up the presently, utterly mad, system – and I thought of Milton Friedman.
But when I checked the sources (for example his book “Free To Choose” – 1980) it was clear that the last Dr Friedman meant the idea that imports could be paid for by printing “money” (these days by creating it on a computer screen) “the cheapest expert industry imaginable” as a JOKE – he did not really mean it as a serious suggestion.
At some point this joke became “the modern economic system” – a “system” that is utterly insane and is falling apart.
“But Britain depends on the modern economic system”.
I know – which is one of the reasons that Britain is doomed.
If, for example, the Economist magazine got its head out of its backside and stopped attacking “Trump” for five minutes, it might notice that the country it is based in (the United Kingdom) is utterly buggered – or, to be polite, this is “broken Britain”.
Lots of typos – for example “late” Milton Friedman, not “last” Milton Friedman, and and “export” not “expert”.
I am very tired, I have had enough.
That’s why I support Reform. Even if you think Badenoch is okay (I think she’s just another nanny statist midwit), what she thinks doesn’t matter because the parliamentary party & Tory nabobs are Blairite technocrats to their core. Even if Badenoch wanted to, no future Tory government would ever leave ECHR, will always always surrender to EU, remigration will never be seriously considered, they’ll never give us back freedom of speech, & justice will remain two-tier. Fuck that.
It’s not that Reform have such great people that makes them the only choice, it’s that they don’t have more than half the (uni)party’s infrastructure serving the interests of the Civil Service, Net Zero Quangos, Brussels, Peking, & Karachi.
Thomas Fairfax – you are, partly, missing the point.
For example, it was not Parliament who destroyed Liz Truss – it was officials and “expert” bodies.
Power is not in elected hands.
You mention the “Quangos” (such as the Bank of England) – but you do not seem to fully grasp that this is where power exists, not in elected hands.
It is the system of governance itself that must be destroyed – unless that is done, electing a Reform Party government will not achieve anything.
Although the situation of the United Kingdom is so bad (vastly worse than most people guess) that I doubt there will be much of a country left to save in 2029.
“Respect for the institutions” is drummed into British people (and Americans) – but the institutions are rotten to the core, they must go.
I don’t think I am.
Reform understands they have to smash the blob rather than try to work with it. And even if for the sake of argument Badenoch also understand that, Badenoch’s party is riddled with people who either don’t understand that, or do understand but are actually on the side of the rotten institutions.
Reform on the other hand have much less baggage in that respect. Their ‘inexperience’ is a plus because much of the rapidly growing Reform apparatus either has no attachment to the status quo, or are former Tories who got their illusions beaten out of them when they tried to be, you know, conservatives when in power, only to get crushed by the blob.
Why do you have to pay Mauritius to take Chagos? Can’t you just pack your belongings, board a magnificent RN transport and leave?
IIRreadingC the UK government removed the Chagossians from Diego Garcia in the 60s and relocated them to Maurituis. In order that a military base could be built. Diego Garcia being the main inhabited island and banning them from returning. The Maldives look to be closer and maybe a ocean going return from there was possible but not from Mauritius hence the choice.
Jacob:
The “deal” is to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, and then pay £100 million a year (index linked) for 99 years to maintain the base on Diego Garcia.
The Don was initially fine with that, now he is not. I do hope he vetoes this terrible deal, but who knows? He is somewhat mercurial.
As Paul says, our politicians did not come up with this deal, it was the Foreign Office. They are a limp wristed bunch, who have been unable to get over the loss of EU membership. They seem to think that Britain must bend to the will of “international law” and never stand up for Britain’s interests. In this aim, they have a willing accomplice in the Starmer regime.
As an aside, the year before the Falklands war, the Foreign Office had been deep in negotiations with the Argentines over a plan to give them sovereignty of the islands, in return for a 99 year lease. Yes, that idea again! The plans collapsed when they were made public and parliament rebelled against them. That was still a thing back then. But the Argentine junta decided that Britain was a weak and effete country which would not fight them if they seized the islands, which they did in 1982. They were wrong then, but under the administration of Sir Keir Starmer, they would have been 100% right.
Thomas Fairfax – I will certainly consider what you have said Sir.
Gurzel Wummidge – Sir Keir Starmer and the other leftists could not give a toss about the Chagossians – the “International Community” types (Sir Keir Starmer, Lord Hermer and the rest of them) hate Britain, and the West generally, it is this hatred that motivates their actions.
JohnK – President Trump was never briefed on the deal and the fault for not briefing him (not telling him what the deal actually was) must fall on the Secretary of State and acting National Security adviser and the time – Marco Rubio, if he was not mislead by the officials at the State Department – which he may have been.
President Trump, naturally enough, still seems to think that Mauritus is paying Britain for the islands – because it is utterly insane for Britain to pay Mauritus to take the islands away from us.