When the news came through late last week that Keir Starmer had dropped the Diego Garcia Bill from the King’s Speech – meaning it will not be in the next legislative session – many asked if this is really the end of the road for the dreadful deal.
The twists and turns of the Chagos saga have been a rollercoaster for those of us campaigning for the islands to remain British sovereign territory.
If it isn’t quite the beginning of the end of this sorry episode, then it is certainly the end of the beginning.
Whether or not the deal can be brought back by a desperate Labour Government at some point in the future (and I doubt it), one thing of which we are now certain is the sheer scale of opposition to Starmer’s Chagos debacle across every party in Parliament – including among his own backbenchers.
Starmer adamantly pushed ahead with the deal, despite repeated and almost universal warnings that it was a bad idea – and made it the centrepiece of his foreign and defence policy. This latest defeat is hugely embarrassing for him, not even two years into his premiership.
Even when Starmer’s own Cabinet Ministers joined those campaigning against the deal (to warn him over its humongous cost to the taxpayer, predicted to be at least £30 billion) – he simply doubled down.
So it is utterly humiliating for him to have to withdraw the legislation needed to enact the deal at such a late stage.
The Government’s late admission that they cannot proceed without the US President’s backing is typical of Starmer’s wildly slow response times to the issues crossing his desk. It was obvious that the Trump administration would never back a deal that is against its own security interests.
The islands host a strategic base for the transatlantic alliance – as has been evident more than ever in recent weeks during the Iran war.
When he was elected, Starmer quite literally immediately conceded sovereignty, making the proposed giveaway his first major international policy move.
What followed was months of misleading statements, secrecy, and deception. Labour Ministers were highly selective – to be generous – with the information they disclosed to Parliament. We still don’t know many of the key details.
That is why I now want a government review into the costs of this waste of time and effort. At a minimum, the Government must publish estimates of the public resources wasted on pursuing its Chagos deal, which has now imploded.
We also need a comprehensive release of information pertaining to the negotiations, so that any future consideration of resettlement on British Indian Ocean Territory can be fully informed by the facts.
Perhaps most significantly of all, Starmer should apologise for the treatment of the Chagossians themselves. Throughout the process, Ministers failed to hold any proper consultation. When the Foreign Secretary did eventually meet with representatives, it was on the day the deal itself was announced.
Just this week, the Government has threatened the Chagossians who arrived on one of the outlying islands with jail time, and even brazenly tried to impound legal equipment and supplies.
This is all while the UK’s own borders remain porous, and the Government seems to have no effective plan to control small boat arrivals here.
The end of the Chagos deal has come about due to Starmer’s own incompetence and intransigence – and that of the Ministers who answer to him.
While Labour is keen to blame President Trump, we can say with certainty that Washington is only acting to defend its own vital security interests – and we are fortunate that the US is clear-sighted enough to see through Labour’s proposals.
It is a cause of huge regret and anguish that Starmer has so badly torched the political vitality of the special relationship, as it stands.
But that relationship is so deep and meaningful that it will survive his calamitous premiership and swiftly be rebuilt.
With the months of Parliamentary time, public money and civil service resources wasted on this abortive deal, Starmer could have made progress many times over with substantive issues – such as the cost of living, his long-promised reforms to the NHS, supporting British business and the like.
The true lesson of the Chagos disaster is exactly where Labour’s priorities lie: wasting huge amounts of public time and effort on issues that bear little relevance to the priorities of voters – but nonetheless manage to sum up everything that is wrong with this out-of-touch Government.
Starmer is getting weaker by the day, and this is another very large nail in the coffin for his dying premiership.
Now they won’t even put a statue of him up in Mauritius – as the government there joins the ever-growing club of people let down by Labour.
Who really thought it would be any different?
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