Labour is not governing in the national interest - the surrender of Chagos to satisfy woke is a huge mistake - Michael Fabricant

This is governing to satisfy the woke sensibilities of the Sinophiles in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

And the Labour Government chose to make this announcement without warning and when Parliament isn’t sitting in an underhand way trying to avoid scrutiny.

Mauritius has close ties with the People’s Republic of China which is expanding its influence far beyond its own shores.

China’s navy is becoming a blue ocean one and it is setting up naval bases in its client states and on artificial islands it is creating off Vietnam, the Philippines and elsewhere where they claim that the surrounding waters are its own.

Already, there have been clashes between the Chinese on the one side and the US and Royal navies on the other.

Now, there will be those who say that these distant islands have no strategic or economic interest for Great Britain. They would be so wrong.

The British Indian Ocean Territory is an important area sitting amongst the shipping lanes connecting trade between the Far East, India, Africa and Europe. The British American base will remain on the island of Diego Garcia, but Mauritius will be free to allow China to open a naval and air base on the neighbouring Chagos islands.

The close proximity between NATO and Chinese naval and forces is a dangerous and volatile combination which should have been avoided at all costs.

The Indian Ocean now has every chance of becoming a major East-West flash-point. David Lammy, our Foreign Secretary, has no grasp of these issues. Instead, he has surrendered to those civil servants in the Overseas Development Office who care more for the welfare of the beneficiaries of British taxpayers money than for the British taxpayers themselves.

The last Conservative Government decided in Britain’s national interest that it would ignore an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in 2019 which called for the islands to be given to Mauritius. And since then, the United Nations General Assembly and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea have reached similar decisions.

These too were rightly ignored. In the event of increased tensions between China and the West, disruption of merchant shipping could provoke major economic failure in the west which will cause shortages and drive inflation back up again.

SEATO, the South East Asia Treaty Organisation – equivalent to our own NATO – has already expressed private concern over the loss of British sovereignty in this area.

Back in 1997 when Hong Kong was handed over to China, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said to his Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell “We shouldn’t lose any more territory”. How different is Sir Keir Starmer and his current Labour Government to Blair.