The decision to hand over the Chagos Islands is down to three men, a top Westminster insider revealed
Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking to the media before a visit to China (Image: Getty)
Three people are in charge of the UK’s foreign policy – including the controversial decision to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, according to a Westminster veteran. Michael Gove, who has served as Education, Justice and Local Government Secretary, has revealed the three people taking charge of how the UK is seen in the rest of the world, but Keir Starmer isn’t one of them.
None is a household name, although they are well-known figures in Whitehall. They include Jonathan Powell, Sir Keir Starmer’s national security adviser, who Lord Gove calls “the single most influential actor in British foreign policy”. Mr Powell has a long history in Downing Street and was chief of staff to Tony Blair back when Sir Tony was Prime Minister.
The other big figures include human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, a left-winger who was once a member of the Liberal Democrats. And the third is Richard Hermer, another human rights lawyer who is Sir Keir’s Attorney General.
Writing in the magazine The Spectator, Lord Gove said: “Together they have ensured that the UK Government has entered into a treaty with Mauritius – an economic dependency of China– to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, which includes the Anglo-American military base of Diego Garcia.
“This handsome gift is to be accompanied with payments running into the billions of pounds, money going straight from the UK defence budget to the Mauritian Government. We are not only losing territory, but paying for the privilege.”
And he said the deal was a result of how the three men see the world. He said: “To understand why the Government is still, formally, set on this course it is necessary to understand the impulses and ideology driving men such as Powell, Sands and Hermer, all of them friends of the Prime Minister and all of them inhabitants of a thought-world in which the concept of Britain’s national interest is subordinated to the dream of a borderless world governed by international jurists.
“Those who threaten the British state and its allies are to be indulged and appeased rather than confronted and defeated.”
Lord Gove does not mention Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper in his essay.
Britain’s deal with Mauritius over the Chagos Islands and Diego Garcia is “falling apart every day”, the Conservatives have said, as they repeated their call for it to be scrapped.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel said the Government had come up with a “surrender deal” to give away sovereignty of the islands, and claimed it had “gaslit” critics.
The agreement would hand over sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius and secure the operation of a joint UK-US base on the island of Diego Garcia for at least 99 years. The UK would also make payments to Mauritius.
It comes after the Government postponed a debate on the deal in the House of Lords, following the Tories tabling an amendment that called for a pause “in the light of the changing geopolitical circumstances”.
Their bid to halt the legislation came after US President Donald Trump branded the deal an “act of great stupidity”, despite previous support from the White House.
Labour’s foreign minister Seema Malhotra said Tory criticisms were “political point-scoring at the expense of our national security”.
