The PM has quickly built a reputation as the worst negotiator since Neville Chamberlain, but today’s announcement is not just bad, it’s downright despicable.
Starmer: There is a cost to Chagos Islands deal
Keir Starmer’s negotiating skills make Neville Chamberlain and Anthony Eden look like master diplomats. Even at the outset of today’s treaty with Mauritius over the Chagos Islands, the deal signed by our government appeared on paper one of the worst, most emasculating, endangering things ever agreed by a UK government.
However I have just sat through an hour’s briefing at the heart of No. 10, as they tried to spin the deal, and can say without a doubt in my mind this deal is much much worse than that. Even more insultingly, Keir Starmer and his ministers don’t even have the guts to tell us the truth. On cost, Sir Keir wanted us to believe that this treaty was a mere £3.4 billion, at £101 million average per year.
Starmer’s deal is the biggest sellout of my lifetime (Image: Getty)
Anyone with a basic ability to do sums can tell you straight away that doesn’t add up. £101 million a year for 99 years comes out just shy of £10 billion.
And so it is. The Government is attempting to use accounting trickery and sleight of hand to claim this deal is basically pocket change – do not believe them.
In reality, Keir Starmer has just given away a key strategic military base, for no reason other than it was demanded by activist foreign judges with a grudge against the British Empire, for a sum of at least £10-13 billion.
Take into account inflation over the lifetime of the deal, and the additional annual sums we’re coughing up for the Chagosians and Mauritians, and this deal could easily total over £30 billion.
How dare this Government treat us like children and not spell this out. If it’s really such an amazing deal, there should be no reason to lie about it.
What even No. 10 can’t deny is that the sum of this deal will be counted towards our annual defence spending.
The Chagos Islands never needed to be handed over (Image: Getty)
Remember that the next time Keir Starmer tells you he’s working towards achieving 2.5% of GDP on defence. He may as well stand on the HMS Queen Elizabeth and burn £20 notes for all the good this is doing to keep Britons safe in their beds.
Then there was the refusal to explain why the US isn’t paying towards the cost of the treaty. While it’s true the US will contribute to the day-to-day running costs of the Diego Garcia base, we have essentially handed Donald Trump a £30 billion freebie.
No wonder the US supports it. Once again, President Trump – the great negotiator – has taken Keir Starmer to the cleaners.
Was there any answer over why the treaty makes explicit reference to ‘decolonisation’? Of course there wasn’t – but we all know why.
This entire situation was manufactured by left-wing foreign judges with a gear to grind with Great Britain and the legacy of empire. There is no legitimacy whatsoever to Mauritus’ claim over the Chagos Islands, which is – ironically – a very blatant example of colonial expansion.
Nor could Sir Keir’s spokesman explain why today’s treaty won’t open the floodgates to further legal challenges to British overseas territories.
I confronted him to ask why, for example, Argentina could not now get a friendly left-wing judge at the UN to claim our ownership of the Falkland Islands is a further example of unlawful colonial ownership, and begin this global humiliation all over again.
He claimed he wouldn’t get into specifics, I think we all know the real answer – there is no reason why that can’t now happen en mass.
Will Keir Starmer ever negotiate on behalf of Britain rather than on behalf of our opponents? Don’t get your hopes up. A leopard never changes its spots.
