Why Tory outrage about the Chagos transfer may be phoney

There seems to be significant faux outrage from Tory leadership candidates Cleverly and Tugendhat about the Starmer government’s transfer of the Chagos islands to Mauritius.

Official sources tell me the transfer would have happened in materially the same way, at roughly the same time if Sunak had somehow won the election.

The point is that the transfer was being negotiated on the recent Tory government’s watch - including by Cleverly as foreign secretary and then by Cameron - and the deadline was set by Washington.

The material fact is that President Biden wanted the deal done before the November 5 presidential election. Biden wanted certainty about the future of the US military base on the Chagossian island of Diego Garcia, just in case Donald Trump were to win the election.

For confirmation that the deal was clinched on a timetable and in a style to suit the US administration, see Biden’s statement that “it is a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.

Biden pointed out that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius meant the US had secured “the effective operation of the joint [military] facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.”

It is therefore curious Tugendhat should describe the transfer as “leaving our allies” exposed when the UK’s most important ally, America, has welcomed it.

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And Cleverly’s denigration of Starmer as “weak, weak, weak” for formalising it, seems eccentric when the negotiations with Mauritius were in full swing when he was in the cabinet.

As for Liz Truss’ assertion that Boris Johnson is to blame, I am told that Johnson was the last PM to wholly oppose giving up sovereignty over Chagos and that the talks did not start properly until she was PM.

If anyone in the Tory party wants to know the nitty-gritty of all this, possibly they could ask for an introduction from the former minister Lord Frost - because his spouse Harriet Matthews has been the lead official negotiator for the Foreign Office on the Chagos treaty with Mauritius.

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