A former Labour MP has defended the decision to hand the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius and said it will not cause any strategic problems for the Americans.
Speaking on GB News, Sion Simon said: “What a lot of nonsense from all these people, honestly, not helped by the fact that we're right, slap bang in the eye of a Tory leadership election.
“The truth is this was a process started two years ago by the then Conservative government, and it's a process that's been conducted in partnership with the Americans who are perfectly happy about it.
“It's got nothing to do with the American lease over Diego Garcia. The British government has no control or say over what happens in Diego Garcia [and] hasn't done for decades and decades.
“The technical sovereignty of Diego Garcia is irrelevant. The Americans have had their lease extended for another 100 years. They totally control that Atoll, and the strategic significance is completely unchanged, and all the rest of it is absolutely fabricated fluff and utter nonsense.
“Mauritius is a holiday resort. Diego Garcia is what matters. It's by far the biggest Atoll in the Chagos islands, the American control, like Diego Garcia is the most kind of secretive, ultra militarised, strategic outpost, pretty much in the world. But the Americans don't let anybody on it.
“Like the idea, the idea that Mauritius is going to start causing the Americans problems, it’s preposterous.
“The difference in the Falklands and Gibraltar, for instance, and the Chagos islands is that Falklands and the Gibraltar are full of people who have very clearly, repeatedly voted that they want to remain British, and there is no chance that a Labour Government will mess with that at all.
“Not the Falklands, not Gibraltar, not any, not anywhere like that.
“The Chagos Islands, which nobody in this country had even heard of last week, are simply not in that category. Are you saying that 97% of people in the Chagos islands want to remain British? No, of course not. There's hardly any people there.
“This is a long term administrative project the British government over the past, from the Conservative to the Labour Party, which is based on geopolitical considerations to do with our relationships with African countries, our relationships with multilateral organisations like the UN the need after Brexit to have as many good relations with as many other countries in the rest of the world as we can.
“And for those reasons, what the incoming Labour government has done is simply tied the bow and signed off the process that the Tories already started in order to get it done and dusted.”
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