OPINION – JONATHAN SAXTY: Taxpayers still on the hook for this awful deal
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch needs to be honest about Tory failings, writes Jonathan Saxty (Image: Will Colebourne/PA Wire)
If the Conservatives want to win hearts and minds on the Right, then it would help to start telling the truth. Perhaps bullish from a post conference poll bounce, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch somewhat overreached this week, criticising Nigel Farage over what she called “humiliating” comments about giving away the Chagos Islands to the Americans.
Sounds ominous enough. Yet what the Reform leader actually said was something else entirely. Not that a Reform government would sign a British territory over to Washington. The Tories might have more authority on this subject if it hadn’t been the Conservatives who started the ball rolling in giving away the Chagos territory to begin with – not to the Americans I might add, but to China’s ally Mauritius.
Incidentally, the taxpayer is on the hook for that awful deal, which Andy Burnham’s Labour is cheerfully continuing with. More importantly, Farage never said he was planning to give the territory to Donald Trump. This is what he actually said: “I’d have gone in and said, ‘Right, you know what, mate? Chagos, it’s yours’. Diego Garcia, in perpetuity, the most strategic American military base in the world, which it is.”
Farage added: “Outside mainland America, Diego is the most important thing America has for nuclear subs, for long-range bombers, for all of it.. I’d have said, ‘Right, I’m guaranteeing you that. I’m giving up on this surrender. In return, just please stop talking about the Falkland Islands’.”
Farage was clearly talking about the lease of the military base of Diego Garcia, which is a) currently used by the UK and US militaries, b) is guaranteed to remain a UK-US military base even under the Mauritius deal, and c) is indeed imperative for Western security.
Badenoch’s authority is further eroded since the Conservative government she served in gutted our armed forces, sat back as UK troop numbers crashed and failed to invest in much-needed military equipment.
Not that Labour is doing better: Open Borders Burnham would rather give taxpayer money to illegal immigrants than fund defence. And again, the Labour government is pressing ahead with the Chagos Chinese takeaway, which the Tories started to begin with. Kemi, if you want to win the argument then probably best to stick to the facts.