Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” was, at the time of its release, headline news.
I think we all long for a time where the lead news story is just a bunch of comedians making a film that some said was blasphemous. At the time a majority of people agreed it wasn’t and that rules about blasphemy were unwise. Angela Rayner should take note.
The film contains a parody of the Sermon on the Mount. You’ve probably seen it.
The joke is not anti-Christian, but simply that the Pythons are stood so far from the Messiah as he speaks, they keep mishearing who is to be prioritised in the eyes of the Lord. Hence ‘blessed are the peacemakers” is mistranslated into “blessed are the cheesemakers.”
Personally, cheesemakers rank very highly on my list of those to be blessed, but recently I feel we may all have been victims of this same mishearing effect. It was “change” that Sir Keir Starmer promised at the election, right?
Are we sure it wasn’t ‘Chagos’?
“The plan for Chagos is necessary” would fit more accurately with the PM’s defence of this increasingly odd deal he has committed to with Mauritius.
”The work of Chagos begins today” would go some way to explain the absurd haste with which the new PM agreed to a deal, after entering office. It even beat economic growth on the to-do-list of the new Labour Government.
Oh I know, the Conservatives negotiated over several months with Mauritius on the same thing. I was there in the Foreign Office at the time. It was a source of constant frustration.
The fact is Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked his Foreign Secretary to look into the ladder-of-lawfare Mauritius had been climbing, over time, with regards to their ‘claim’ to the Chagos Islands. Then his Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, became his successor, and James Cleverly was left with the file on his desk. By the time he was moved to the Home Office 14 months later there was no deal, and Lord Cameron his successor shut the process down.
As Cleverly told the Commons on Wednesday “The point of a negotiation is not to get any deal but to get a good deal, and if you do not get a good deal, then you should walk away from the table, as we did.”
The Prime Minister had insisted earlier to MPs that “The very clear advice that the government has received is that the operation of the base would be at risk without a deal and that would affect our national security.”
Let’s be crystal clear. This is not new advice, but the exact same advice we were given. It’s also why any new “security briefing” Kemi Badenoch might have been offered would also not be ‘new.’
The advice was not wholly convincing, for reasons I’ll come to, nor was it filtered to us through the lens of the new Attorney General or the new Prime Minister, both lawyers steeped in human rights work. Philippe Sands KC, who has been close to the Prime Minister for more than 20 years, had, until recently, acted as legal counsel to Mauritius since 2010.
It’s worth noting by-the-by that this deal does not do much for the human rights of the Chagosians, who’ve not been consulted. It’s true the majority of them don’t want to return and many have been settled in Sussex for years now. But maybe they should at least have had some say. They have much to say about Professor Sands.
Mauritius’ new government under Navin Ramgoolam are far more demanding than their predecessors over their claim to the islands 1300 miles away. It’s the sort of geographic distance that reasonably questioned our sovereignty over the Falklands back in the day, until twelve years ago when almost the entire population (99.8%) there voted to be British.
So why is this so important.
It’s all about Diego Garcia, the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago and the joint UK-US airbase there. So as not to stray too far into “none of your business” territory let’s just accept both the UK and US do not want to lose the use of this base. File under “Important. Strategic” and that’s where, legally, I have have to stop.
On one level, over the pond, the idea of negotiation was acceptable as long as it ensured continued use of the base. On another level, where President Trump’s new administration has been voicing its security concerns, not least over Mauritian relations with China, it’s a great deal – they get to use the airbase, and we pay for it. Through the nose.
This fact, ironically, might be the best card Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser will hold as he now heads to Washington for meetings with Mike Waltz, his US counterpart, in an attempt to convince the administration of the merits of their deal.
His weakest card is this odd, new, excuse about an exclusive US-UK communications system around the base, seemingly under threat without a deal. So far, and as many have pointed out on social media, Mauritius and the International Court of Justice, can’t police the laws of physics and shut down electromagnetic communications.
So what of the cost to us? Nine billion pounds, maybe more, front loaded over 99 years.
Where the beleaguered and growth-starved Labour Government imagined it was going to find nine billion is another question. They claim to be fixing the foundations of the economy – but whose?
Mauritius’ GDP was calculated in 2024, when the deal was ‘done’, at approximately £13billion in nominal terms – so £9 billion would fix the foundations… the walls, roof terrace, marble reception hall and palm fringed plunge pool of the Mauritian economy. All for an airstrip 1300 miles away.
Then there is the law.
The legal ‘threat’ is predicated on an advisory opinion issued in 2019 by the International Court of Justice awarding the islands to Mauritius and threatening the “practical” operation of the base. The concern has been that Mauritius would attempt a beefed up new case to make the ruling binding. A government source told the Times newspaper on Wednesday “ The lawyers said we would have lost the case and been evicted.”
Evicted by whom? Does the ICJ possess a SWAT team? Do the US seem likely to accept eviction? Will the Mauritian navy (I should really check what that consists of) sail 1300 miles to stage a sit-in? Let’s remember Russia still sits on the Security Council of the UN, after invading its neighbour in a brutal and increasingly bloody three year war.
I spent yesterday talking more to Labour contacts than Conservative, and for the life of me I can’t find anyone who can explain why Labour rushed into this. Maybe it was the temptation of “doing something” the Tories ‘couldn’t’ (without asking ‘why?’) or the resonance of this being “a last act of de-colonisation” as Ramgoolam has put it. I can reasonably see, given his long held views, the new Foreign Secretary wooed by such a case. They could rather have spent months, even years in negotiation, where Mauritius didn’t go to court.
Either way, I’ve always been sorry we even touched the issue, but glad we didn’t make the deal. I start to wonder whether Labour, already facing questions of how £9 billion might be better spent here, is wishing it too had never gone near it.
