How Keir Starmer’s Decision to Relinquish Britain’s Last Colony in Africa Sparked Outrage

The UK government has finally agreed to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, ending years of bitter dispute over the last British colony in Africa.

The Britons have controlled the Chagos Islands for more than 200 years, but Mauritius, an island nation located about 1,400 miles away, has claimed sovereignty over them.

The Chagos Islands are home to Diego Garcia Air Base, a key military outpost for both Britain and the United States in the region.

Plans to hand the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius were due to be dropped last year, following opposition from Grant Shapps, then defence secretary, and concerns about Mauritius’ alliance with China.

The UK concession comes after 13 rounds of negotiations that began in 2022 after the International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) recognised Mauritius’ arguments.

Britain’s decision to give up its last colony in Africa has sparked a storm of criticism, with the opposition describing the handover of the islands to Mauritius as a strategic disaster.

British Concession

The UK Labour government has announced that it will give up sovereignty over the strategically important Chagos Islands archipelago in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, which has made numerous legal initiatives to assert its sovereignty over the islands for several decades.

Although the negotiations that led to the recently announced agreement began years before Keir Starmer became prime minister, the timing of this breakthrough reflects the urgent need to transform the UK’s role on the international stage.

Under the Conservatives, the UK initially accepted Mauritius’ claims to sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, but later rejected them due to concerns about Chinese influence over the Mauritian government.

Mauritius won a non-binding ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2019 declaring Britain’s ownership illegal.

The UN General Assembly later voted by a large majority to return control of the islands as soon as possible.

The UK has defied the UN vote and court rulings calling for it to return the islands, insisting the ICJ ruling was merely an advisory opinion.

But Foreign Office staff have since begun working to comply with the non-binding ruling, fearing that failure to do so would damage Britain’s standing.

Talks to hand over the island began during Liz Truss’s brief premiership and have continued throughout Rishi Sunak’s tenure in Downing Street.

Former prime minister Rishi Sunak was warned last year by a former head of the Royal Navy not to give up the territory.

But since coming to power in July, the Labour government has moved quickly to seal the deal with Mauritius.

Starmer had tasked former foreign secretary Jonathan Powell, a veteran of Tony Blair’s foreign policy, with overseeing the final negotiations.

The UK separated the Chagos Islands from the rest of Mauritius, expelling between 1,500 and 2,000 islanders, so that it could lease Diego Garcia to the US for military use. The two allies have since jointly run the military base.

Criticism and Outrage

Amid widespread outrage over his decision to hand them over to Mauritius, PM Keir Starmer will be forced to hold a vote on whether to cede sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

The prime minister has been heavily criticised for the move, which was announced during the parliamentary recess, and without seeking the opinion of MPs in the House of Commons.

The Telegraph quoted Robert Jenrick, the frontrunner to become the next Tory leader, as saying that the Conservative Party must show its strong opposition to the principle of the agreement.

“Labour’s decision places their ideology ahead of Britain’s national interests. They’ve snuck out their betrayal while Parliament isn’t sitting, to avoid scrutiny,” Jenrick added.

The Telegraph quoted former PM Boris Johnson as saying that the decision would weaken Britain's standing in the world, considering the Chagos Islands a vital national asset.

The Daily Mirror and some commentators considered that giving up the British islands would close another page in the history of the empire's colonies, although the islands have been legally part of the UK since the fall of 1965.

Other newspapers and media outlets turned their front pages into angry criticism of Starmer and his government, accusing him not only of compromising national sovereignty, but also of ignorance of the facts of geography, ethnography, history, and defence strategy.

Retired senior UK army officers also accused the Labour government of being unpatriotic because it puts socialist ideology before national interests.

Former Security Secretary Tom Tugendhat expressed his concerns about the implications for wider Western security in the event of giving up the Chagos Islands.

Former Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt described giving up the islands as causing great harm to the interests of the United Kingdom.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said that Keir Starmer’s decision to give up the Chagos Islands would anger our American allies and please Beijing.

He also stressed that the decision to hand the archipelago to Mauritius was a strategic disaster and that Labour would make the world a more dangerous place.

Reform Party deputy leader Richard Tice also expressed concerns about the amount of taxpayers’ money that would be handed over to Mauritius as part of the deal .

Critics also fear that giving up British territory could set a precedent that would encourage other countries to take more of the UK’s territory.

Already, Spain is redoubling its claims over Gibraltar, while Argentina has issued a new declaration about its determination to gain sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.

Mark Francois, the former Armed Forces minister, told The Telegraph: “Before Argentina ups its rhetoric over the Falklands or Spain does over Gibraltar – we now need both of those other claims categorically refuted in the House of Commons.”

On 5 September, a government minister was forced to issue a statement on the territories after the Prime Minister did not rule out signing them away.

Stephen Doughty, the minister for UK Overseas Territories, wrote on X: “British sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar or any other of our overseas territories is not up for negotiation. The Chagos Islands are a very different issue, with a very different history."

Chinese Threat

Under a recently announced deal, the UK will retain control of the UK-American military base on Diego Garcia, one of the Chagos Islands, at a time of growing geopolitical rivalry in the region between the West, India and China.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the UK government had secured the future of the military base as well as its long-term relationship with Mauritius, a close Commonwealth partner.

US President Joe Biden welcomed the agreement as a clear demonstration that countries can overcome long-standing historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes.

Biden stressed that this strategically located base between Europe, India and China plays a fundamental role in national, regional and global security, noting that the agreement will ensure its smooth functioning over the next century.

Although the military base will remain under an agreement for 99 years, the greatest threat comes from the rapprochement between Mauritius and China, which is in a state of cold war with the Anglo-American alliance.

After giving up the islands to Mauritius, it is most likely that China, which is expanding its influence in Africa, will present attractive offers to establish naval and air bases on more than one island.

While the Starmer government sought to convince public opinion that Washington had agreed to hand over the British islands to Mauritius, The Times published a few days ago, quoting US security sources, that “Washington is concerned about its expectation of a Chinese military presence on the islands.”