Großbritannien stellt Chagos Islands Deal in die Warteschleife, um „giftige Gegenreaktionen“ zu vermeiden.

You mean giving away territory *and* paying for it is an unpopular policy? Colour me surprised…

In reality the new Mauritian Government asked for a way bigger financial contribution than had been agreed in the negotiations with the old Government. The UK Government declined the demand and it appears everyone is back to square one pending new negotiations, which I suspect may be some time in coming.

Good. It was potentially the most stupid foreign policy initiative we’ve put forward in years. Hopefully they quietly kill it off in a couple years.

Expect the international police to come knocking any day now 

That local council elections knocked some common sense into Labour in this issue didn’t it

>Part of the reasoning behind the delay is a reluctance to hand easy ammunition to Nigel Farage, who has frequently campaigned against the deal and called for the UK to sell the islands instead.

This man is basically already PM with how many u turns he’s caused in the last couple of weeks,

If the UK owns it but the US use it, why not just give it to the US and be done with it?

As I understand it, Mauritius‘ claim to the islands is itself a kind of colonial claim. The British empire administered Mauritius, Chagos and the other islands in the region as a group. So an independent Mauritius claims a right to continue that practice.

However the Chagos archipelago is 1400 km away from Mauritius. So there isn’t necessarily a logical basis for forcing Chagos to form part of Mauritius, other than the old logic of the British empire that places which are sufficiently far away from Britain can be grouped together however we like by drawing a line on a map.

So giving Mauritius land costs us money, how much do they give us if we take their land instead?

I’m developing a plan here

We could re-name Mauritius to New Essex

So now we see if the various claims by Labour ministers are correct don’t we? Those are:

* We lose soft power with random 5 pence GDP African countries

* We can’t use radio frequencies anymore or some absolute bollocks

* The Chinese will use it as propaganda against us (they’d do this anyway, it’s propaganda. It doesn’t need to be true..)

* The international police will come and arrest us for breaking the international law

Oh good the „experts“ on this deal are back on here.

There has already been a backlash of incredulity that such a self-harming treaty is even being contemplated. It’s not „toxic“ to point out the utter fukwittery of those who are planning to do this.

1. We pay Mauritius billions to take territory that is not theirs anyway. Mauritius is 1,300 miles from the Chagos Islands.
2. Mauritius is in China’s influence and does not give a toss about the UK.
3. We cede influence and useful territory, which may be even more important in the future.
4. We allow a pristine 640,000 sq km (250,000 sq mi) marine protected zone to be cancelled, because it will be over-fished when the UK leave. You can see the Chinese fishing fleet on the horizon.

It’s a bit silly that we own the Islands, but at the same time I haven’t actually heard a good reason why we should be giving them to Mauritius. Honestly this whole thing is just people making a big deal about something that doesn’t matter at all. Even the supposedly extortionate rent we were going to be paying for America’s continued use of the bases there was a pittance in the national budget.