A last-minute legal bid to prevent the British government spending billions of pounds of taxpayers money to give away its own sovereign territory, home to an important U.S.-UK military base, and then lease it back has been overturned.
The UK government of left-wing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is clear to give away the British Indian Ocean Territory, an archipelago of around 1,000 islands in the Indian Ocean after an eleventh-hour legal challenge was overturned.
As previously reported, a “stay of action” order was issued by a High Court judge at 0230 BST this morning, blocking a signing ceremony to hand over the islands today, but at a second hearing later in the morning a different judge overturned that.
Mr Justice Chamberlain said, per The Times: “I have concluded that the stay granted by Mr Justice Goose should be discharged and there should be no further interim relief”.
Under the deal ‘negotiated’ by the British government, the islands will be handed over to Mauritius — despite concerns the country is drifting towards China’s orbit — and will then pay billions of pounds to lease back one of the islands, Diego Garcia, for a 99-year lease.
Diego Garcia contains a strategically vital joint British-American airbase and critics, including from the Nigel Farage-led Reform UK Party, have said surrendering control of the surrounding islands of a key base to a foreign power leaves it vulnerable to spying. As earlier reported:
Nigel Farage has said over the course of the lease, the deal will cost British taxpayers £52 billion to lease land the government already — for now — owns. Also of concern is claims that Mauritius is growing closer to countries like China, and like Britain’s handover of Hong Kong in 1997, any agreements made today won’t be observed in the long-run.
The British government stuck to its stock line that giving away sovereign British territory, which contains one of the world’s most strategically important U.S. air and naval bases, and paying a foreign government that has never controlled the islands before for the pleasure, is “the right thing to protect the British people and our national security”.
… The British Indian Ocean Territory (‘BIOT’), as the islands are presently called, apart from its very striking flag, is best known for hosting a strategically important military base on its largest island, Diego Garcia. The British had built an airbase operating against the Japanese on the island during the Second World War and U.S. Seabees build a new base in the 1970s to support long-range bombers and other aircraft. Beyond the military base, it is understood the island has also been used as a listening station to intercept radio traffic in the Indian Ocean and, possibly, as a “CIA black site.”
The announcement by the UK and Mauritius stated that the continued operation of the base is secured for an initial period of 99 years, assuming Mauritius keeps its word. The United Kingdom, of course, has not had good experiences in the recent past with promises exacted from new territorial masters of strategically valuable islands surrendered by choice in the Eastern hemisphere, but these lessons appear to have been put aside for expedience.
The case against the government was funded by the Ben Habib-chaired Great British Political Action Committee, and their lawyers argued the deal would not be materially harmed by delaying signing for a few weeks of due diligence. The government lawyer demurred, stating there was a “real risk” of the deal being frustrated, and tacitly arguing the importance of the time of government ministers outweighed the importance of the legal challenge.
They said: “Planning for the signature has required co-ordinating diaries of the UK and Mauritian prime ministers and UK and Mauritian foreign ministers, at a time of high international tension, with many competing diplomatic and other priorities, so that the necessary signature process can be followed.”
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