Day of shame for naive Labour as it gives away strategically vital Chagos Islands and leaves taxpayers with endless bill
Gift to our foes
WHAT a day of ignominy for the new Government — not just giving away strategically vital British territory but handing taxpayers an endless bill for the privilege.
Labour will insist the airbase we and the Americans share on Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands of the Indian Ocean is secure for a century under a lease they have signed.
How naive must they be?
Mauritius is an ally of China, a state hostile to the West. Beijing will be doubled-over laughing at us.
The same class of gullible politicians and civil servants who trust everyone involved to honour this deal also believed China’s phoney assurances about Hong Kong in the 1990s.
Look how they panned out.
It should mortify the Tories that they began the negotiating process on this two years ago.
But Labour has taken mere weeks to capitulate entirely, despite Mauritius’s historic claim having no validity — it never owned the islands — nor being legally binding.
Only last week our Government said no conclusion had been reached. Now, with Parliament in recess, it announces this appalling fait accompli.
What now for the Falklands? Will Labour’s puerile embarrassment over “wrongs of the past” trump our sovereignty there too?
The Government says not. But plenty on the Left also want to honour Argentina’s wholly false claim.
The Chagos debacle weakens us militarily while, incredibly, forcing us to pay unknown sums to Mauritius every year.
It looks a historic error.
Eco ‘solution’
WE admire Keir Starmer’s optimism on the carbon capture technology he says could prove a Net Zero game-changer.
It is expensive and largely unproven at scale. But at least he is seeking ways to hit zero emissions by 2050 without sacrificing working-class jobs on the altar of eco-extremism.
He is right too to stare down Extinction Rebellion. They care nothing for livelihoods. They and Just Stop Oil are doomsday cults who romanticise pre-industrial squalor.
On balance we should invest in the possibilities of carbon capture which, as the PM describes opposite, would bury factories’ CO2 before it can be released.
It could prove crucial . . . if it works.
Life or death
IT is right for MPs to reconsider the fraught issue of assisted dying — and have a free vote on it.
They must scrutinise every syllable of the Bill being put forward this month.
There are complex, emotional arguments on both sides, with legitimate concerns about the vulnerable feeling under pressure to end their life early.
A new debate, nine years after the last, is welcome. But it must not be rushed.