FUTURE historians will have a lot to wonder about when they consider British foreign policy during the Starmer years. OK, more likely months.
One major question, clearly, will be how did Sir Keir’s hand-picked man for saving the Western world in Washington end up helping the police with their inquiries in Wandsworth?
But I feel Sir Keir’s greatest achievement is building in the Indian Ocean. How, in the name of all virtue-signalling, did his plan to decolonise the Chagos Islands whip up a colonial rebellion?
It’s not as if he’s got that many colonies to choose from. And how did he manage to provoke a popular uprising in a place that had no population at all?
Readers are, I’m sure, increasingly familiar with the head-spinning details of the Chagos folly. Gradually, the rest of the world is beginning to watch as appreciation grows that Sir Keir’s fumblings make comedy gold.
TCW dealt briefly with the fiasco last week, highlighting the central and lucrative role of Sir Keir’s old crony Professor Philippe Sands.
The current Chagos position seems to be that a group of Chagossians, assisted by a former Tory MP, have returned to their islands from British-imposed exile and reclaimed them.
Their First Minister, Misley Mandarin, is now doing his best to attract the friendly attention of Donald Trump. His gist is that, rather than see the islands handed to China ally Mauritius as Sir Keir intends, the Chagossians would prefer to become America’s 51st state.
Mr Mandarin has declared from his beachhead camp that a government run by and for Chagossians would not hamper operations at the big US airbase in the archipelago at Diego Garcia.
‘For too long, decisions about Diego Garcia were made in distant capitals, without our voice, without our consent,’ he said. ‘That era is over.’
He added: ‘Diego Garcia is not just a military base. It is a pillar of stability in the Indian Ocean. It protects trade routes, deters aggression, and helps preserve global security.
‘These are dangerous times and so I must be absolutely clear. If the United States decides that action is needed to defend international order, then as the elected government of these islands, we give our permission for the use of Diego Garcia in defence of peace.
‘We, the people of the Chagos Islands, give our blessing for the United States to use the base at Diego Garcia for strikes against the Iranian regime – in defence of the Iranian people.’
In return Mr Mandarin has asked for US recognition and protection for the new Chagos government.
Given that Britain appears to have refused the US the use of British bases for strikes against Iran, and Mr Trump already appears deeply frustrated with the Chagos giveaway, that sounds like a well-pitched appeal.
If Sir Keir’s decolonisation plan – which involves paying Mauritius large sums of money to take over the islands – is to go ahead, Sir Keir needs to get rid of Mr Mandarin, and quickly.
That may not be so easy. London judges, never keen to deport foreign criminals from Britain, appear reluctant to order the deportation of Chagossians from Chagos.
It might be possible to starve him out, since Chagos has no source of supplies. But that could be a long-drawn-out and highly-publicised process.
Sir Keir has opponents who know a good stunt when they see one. Nigel Farage appears to have been in the Indian Ocean, trying to get a boat from the Maldives to join the Chagos beach party. Maldives officials appear, with British encouragement, to have been blocking this trip. It’s funny how far the arm of the British Government can reach when it’s really important.
This is all first-rate material for a classic post-war British black-and-white comedy, a tropical Passport to Pimlico. That film, you may remember, involved a Londoners’ rebellion against the restrictions, over-regulation and rationing imposed by a Labour government.
I could cast a Boulting Brothers version of the Chagos nonsense, entitled I’m All Right Keir, right now. I can see Peter Sellers as Mr Mandarin, Kenneth Williams as Nigel Farage, Bernard Cribbins as Sir Keir, Margaret Rutherford as Dame Emily Thornberry and Liz Fraser as Rachel Reeves.
Sir Keir may not have long to enjoy the fun. People may tire of his blundering statecraft: the bowing and scraping to China for no return except the insult of jailing Jimmy Lai; the expensive flirting with the EU that seems to be irritating both remainers and brexiteers. Voters may come to resent their country being made an international laughing stock.
Footnote:
There is a family link between seventies British films and Sir Keir’s collection of clowns. The depths of bad sex comedy were plumbed by the Confessions series in the mid-seventies, films chiefly noted for giving work to actors who might otherwise have had none. Prominent among these was Anthony Booth, who first rose to fame as a stalwart of Till Death Do Us Part, a rarely-repeated but once admired sitcom.
Mr Booth had a daughter who became a famous human rights lawyer and is now Cherie, Lady Blair, CBE, KC. She was a founder of the Matrix human rights chambers, a set whose members have included the legal Laurel and Hardy behind the Chagos giveaway, Professor Sands and Attorney General Lord Hermer.
Well, here’s another nice mess they’ve gotten Keir into.
