Priti Patel: Labour have paid a huge price tag just to damage British interests and please lefty lawyers

Dame Priti Patel is Shadow Foreign Secretary and MP for Witham.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David ‘Calamity’ Lammy, have signed away British sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, otherwise known as the British Indian Ocean Territory.

They have given into the demands of Mauritius because rather than stand up for the British national interest, Starmer and Lammy would rather side with the campaigns of left-wing activists and lawyers.

As well as surrendering sovereignty, they’ve signed up to make you pay a £30 billion ‘surrender tax’ over 99 years to lease back our military base on Diego Garcia, with the bill to the British taxpayer rising every single year.

We know that Labour don’t understand economics, but when they are taxing businesses and families more, cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners and refusing to invest in key services it is shameful that they are stumping up so much taxpayers’ money for this unnecessary decision. As well as the annual lease payments for 99 years, Labour have signed up to give Mauritius £45m a year for 25 years.

That’s over £1bn to build infrastructure in Mauritius not Chagos, while we need more funding for schools, hospitals and roads in Britain.

This deal is bad for many reasons.

It puts our national security and defence at risk, with the UK now having to notify Mauritius – a country that’s friendly with Russia and China – of some of the military operations that could take place from Diego Garcia. Labour might as well have invited the worlds hostile powers and malign actors to come sit in our operations rooms and take our sensitive intelligence first hand.

It also means that vessels used by foreign powers can partner with Mauritius and enter waters in the vicinity of Diego Garcia. That’s right, foreign spies and agents can get closer to Diego Garcia than ever before because of Labour. And this deal was signed just days after Mauritius signed a new partnership with Putin’s Russia.

And when we raised all of these valid concerns, when we spoke up about the deeply damaging impact that the deal might have for our national security, Keir Starmer resorted to baseless slurs and outright lies to defend this disastrous deal.

On the day of this deal’s signing, a day of great shame for our country, Starmer stood in front of the nation at a military headquarters and said that the Conservatives were in league with China in opposition to the deal – in fact China welcomed the deal as a great benefit to their interests just days later.

If the Prime Minister of this country has to resort to such desperate attempts at spin, then it is clear how unfit for purpose this deal is – and that even and his Labour government know it.

But it is not just Britain that is betrayed. This deal also betrays the Chagossians, leaving decisions about their ability or otherwise to settle on the Chagos Islands in the hands of the Government of Mauritius, with whom many Chagossians have grave concerns.

Labour have also negotiated this deal in secret from the get-go, and refused to provide answers to important questions Conservatives have been raising for months. But we know, not from our own government, but from the Prime Minister of Mauritius that Labour kept giving them more concessions at every step.

In fact, he has boasted about how in recent months Labour caved in to so many of their demands, including more money being paid upfront and stopping the UK being able to unilaterally extend the lease –  which means after 99 years Mauritius can give it away to the highest bidder if Britain can’t match their price, including to hostile states seeking to expand their regional influence at our expense.

And all of this cost, all of this disaster, comes so that Keir Starmer can get a pat on the back from his north London, human rights lawyer, dinner party pals for righting “the wrongs of the past” and delivering “decolonisation” – the actual aims of this deal according to the treaty.

Labour’s surrender deal is bad for Britain, will cost taxpayers billions, and is an insult to the Chagossians, and we will oppose it every step of the way – including when the bill is brought before parliament and we can scrutinise the legislation the government is expected to try and pass to make this surrender a reality.

When Labour negotiates Britain loses.

With Starmer and Calamity Lammy travelling the world waving the white flag of surrender instead of flying the Union Flag with pride, our friends and foes will walk all over them in future negotiations. It is about time they moved aside and let those of us who do care defend our national interests.