The Chagos Islands: A Surrender of Sovereignty and Sense
Keir Starmer's government has sacrificed the UK's hard power and one of its few naval bases of strategic importance on the altar of appeasing an international order that is already dying.
To anyone who has been keenly following British politics for the past few months, one of the most striking and baffling developments has been the ongoing dispute over the future sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean home to a joint British-American naval base, the Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia. It’s a story that proves the limits of unitary states in an increasingly globalised world order and the vested interest of British politicians and where their loyalties lie, especially the prime minister, Keir Starmer.
Before spilling into a tirade, it would perhaps be prudent to provide some brief context. In 2019, the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding advisory opinion stating that the UK had “an obligation to bring an end to its administration of the Archipelago as rapidly as possible” in pursuit of the UN’s aims on decolonisation. Two years later, this ruling was strengthened by another one issued by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which confirmed that the UK had “no sovereignty over the islands” and argued that the best course of action was for the territory to be handed back to Mauritius.
Following these rulings, the Foreign Secretary at the time, James Cleverly, opened up negotiations with the Mauritius government. Small progress was made until the negotiations were put on hold until after the snap election where they were reopened by the incoming Labour government.
This is where we now find ourselves.
After “renegotiations,” the UK is planning to double its financial payments (legal double-speak for historical reparations) to Mauritius while relinquishing the last vestiges of bargaining power it has over the disputed territory by giving Mauritius a veto over the renewal of the lease. Under the new terms, the UK is expected to pay £30 billion over a 40-year time period from the already-overstretched Defence Budget with no legal guarantee it could remain in control over the territory. Just for scale, the agreed sum is worth more than Mauritius's annual GDP and the cost of the new Dreadnought SSBN programme, an obscene amount to waste by a government that is supposedly constrained by a £22bn financial black-hole.
No-one can still explain what this potent legal threat that would’ve compelled the UK to relinquish the base might be because as many have already noted it doesn’t exist. It’s not about security, it’s about “decolonisation”.
Aside from the sheer insanity of the new terms, this dispute is more interesting in what it reveals about Starmer’s philosophy, how he views Britain’s place in the world and what obligations he feels the country is entrusted with. The way in which he zealously upholds the ICJ’s ruling at the expense of the UK’s bargaining position is an apt reminder that Starmer is a lawyer first and foremost, not a politician. He sees everything through the prism of international law and how Britain is regarded on the world stage. Presentation matters, not substance. It doesn’t matter that the latest deal places a heavier burden on the UK treasury than the last version. It doesn’t matter that the deal would deprive the UK of one of its last few naval bases of strategic importance, thus undermining its projection of hard power and opening the country to more historical grievances from former colonies. What matters is appeasing an international order Starmer and his ilk have been trained to revere at the cost of everything else, a subjugation that plays a role in the way most activist lawyers conduct themselves, often at the expense of the people they ostensible serve.
The global human rights industry was largely a product of America’s unipolar moment, holding out the prospect of an international enforcer of liberal values, the closest to a global hegemon that history has yet witnessed. Having convinced themselves that history had ended, with themselves the victors, buoyant liberals, as the political theorist Patrick Hayden observed, saw the creation of an international human rights regime as a means of “replacing the realist national interest-based security paradigm with a cosmopolitan, person-based paradigm”. Within Britain, there was no more zealous enforcer of either American power or human rights legislation than New Labour, and the legal supergroup Matrix Chambers it spawned — of which Starmer, Cherie Blair, Philippe Sands and Attorney General Lord Hermer are all alumni.
Yet, Britain’s continued rule by the Matrix Chambers coterie does not serve it well in this actually-existing era of international competition. In October, the Attorney General condemned politicians “who appeal to the ‘will of the people’” rather than adhere to the perfect and unchangeable abstractions of international law. But the latest revelations of Hermer’s pursuit of war crimes charges against the SAS, following his long history of acting against the interests of the British state and people, pose a problem for Starmer. A country increasingly sick of activist lawyers will not long consent to be ruled by them, nor to pay heavily to advance their pet projects, as with the self-defeating Chagos Islands surrender, a personal Sands crusade.
For Sands and Starmer, the world is divided between righteous advocates of the rule of law and “populists” who seek to overturn it. It is a version of cosmopolitanism honed into an uncompromising, even fundamentalist vision. Above mere nation-states shines down the perfect and immutable Law, towards which frail, misguided, even wicked human societies, swayed by the currents of mere democracy and the temptations of national self-interest, must be shepherded, whether they will it or not. If it weakens individual statehood — “that most artificial and fake of constructs”, as Sands once put it — so much the better: only thus can utopia be reached. Unlike America itself, which along with Russia and China has always placed its sovereign interests above treaties and tribunals, we remain ruled by zealots, highly-educated naïfs who affirm that international law exists as an objective reality in itself, rather than a political construct derived from state power and the will to wield it.
In essence, the British government is an open conspiracy of human rights lawyers against the national interest. The state itself has become a treasonable enterprise against the nation. Most of our political class basically openly identify as partisans of other countries. If they ever support any notion of the 'national interest,' you can be sure that the nation in question isn't the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Fortunately, sanity has not yet deserted some on the Labour frontbenches - for now at least. Sources who spoke to The Times under the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information lambasted the deal. One MP said they “don’t understand why the UK is sending so much money to Mauritius when the Treasury is asking departments to make brutal spending cuts at home”. Another called for Starmer to cancel the deal. Even Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, hardly one known for his national chauvinistic views, described the deal as a “shambles” and urged for a review.
Whether any of this amounts to a tangible political backlash remains to be seen. Thanks to his comfortable majority, Starmer is immune from any threats to his rule and because the topic does not command the urgency of the public, there is unlikely to be any real incentive to make it a major campaign issue. The only hope in the deal being derailed lies with Donald Trump, who has openly mocked it and expressed a willingness to intervene on behalf of the UK in reversing the deal.
Trump, only a few months into his second term, has already proven the extent to which hard power still shapes the conduct of states by bringing forth a ceasefire deal after pressuring his Israeli counterparts with threats of halting financial aid. While the long term prospects of this new accord remain fragile, it achieved more in stopping the bloodshed in one day than the Biden administration managed in over a year of managing the ongoing war. Appeals to international law had no impact on Benjamin Netanyahu’s behaviour, but reasserting the raw facts of relative power appears to have ended the war in an instant. States have always been governed and interacted with each other according to their national interests; those who impede these interests are swept aside.
The global order in which Starmer grew up idealising is dying. States are once again reasserting their sovereignty. America hopes to add new territorial possessions in Panama and Greenland while China ramps up its claims over Taiwan. This makes the UK’s actions in regards to the Chagos Islands all the more pathetic and self-defeating.