The Vultures Are Circling

One of the great mysteries of Keir Starmer’s government is why he’s so determined to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which is 1,200 miles away and has never owned them. Even now, as he desperately fights for his political survival, Starmer is pushing ahead with plans to give away the strategic archipelago then pay tens of billions of pounds to lease back one of the islands. It’s an odd thing to be so focused on - but whether his compulsion to surrender the islands is driven by corruption or naivete, it’s sending out signals of weakness. And those signals are being noticed.

Last Thursday the Republic of Maldives announced that it had rejected the UN International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea’s ruling on its maritime boundaries, and sent an armed boat to carry out a “special surveillance operation” in the northern part of the Chagos island’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The Chagos EEZ is claimed by Mauritius, but of course actually belongs to Britain until Starmer’s surrender deal is approved by Parliament. However, the Maldivian government has now decided to make its own claim on the area - and it’s very publicly doing something about it. The “coast guard vessel” CGS Dharumavantha - a former Turkish Navy fast attack craft - is now operating in the area, along with drones from the Maldives National Defence Force Air Corps.

Of course, the Maldives has no real claim to the Chagos islands or any part of their waters. The country - a tiny group of islands southwest of Sri Lanka, with a land area of just 115 square miles - was a British crown colony from 1796 to 1953, and a British protectorate until 1965. Like Mauritius, it has never owned the Chagos Islands. However, it’s just 300 miles away from them, much closer than Mauritius. It appears that its leader, President Mohamed Muizzi, has decided that if the key British territory is up for grabs the Maldives should be the ones to grab it. It’s true the Maldives doesn’t have much of a navy, but then Mauritius doesn’t have much of a navy either and is a lot further away. If the Maldives can seize control over part of the extremely valuable Chagos Marine Protected Area (MPA), and even possibly some of the northern islands, there isn’t a lot Mauritius can do about it.

Why would the Maldives be so keen to seize part of the Chagos EEZ? That one’s simple. Under British protection, the Chagos MPA (which is the largest marine nature reserve in the entire world) has been officially off limits to commercial fishing since 2010 but, in practice, has barely been fished at all since 1968. This makes it a unique and potentially lucrative resource in the Indian Ocean region, which has seen its ecosystems devastated by destructive fishing methods. The wealth of the MPA is the main reason Mauritius wants the Chagos islands. Its own coastal waters have been blighted by overfishing, including the destruction of coral reefs by explosives and bleach injection, and now it wants to plunder the MPA. The Maldives is also busily engaged in destroying its own fish stocks (fishing is the country’s largest industry and employs half the population) and is desperate for new waters to pillage. They don’t just want access for their own boats, either. Like Mauritius, the Maldives under Muizzi’s rule is an increasingly close ally of China.

China has the world’s largest fishing fleet, and it’s not even close. Over 44% of all commercial fishing is carried out by Chinese boats - and they’re notorious for flouting international law. Chinese boats regularly change their names and disable their satellite tracking systems to conceal their identity, then fish illegally in other countries’ waters. They violate quotas, catch protected species and strip whole swathes of ocean clean of any life much larger than plankton with massive, indiscriminate drift nets. Chinese fishing boats have also been implicated in people trafficking, drug smuggling and acting as spying and covert action platforms for the Chinese navy.

If either Mauritius or the Maldives gain control of the Chagos MPA it’s a certainty they will immediately give Chinese boats access, and this priceless nature reserve will rapidly be trawled and drift-netted into a barren, lifeless wasteland. From China’s point of view, of course, it doesn’t matter which of their lackeys takes over the Chagos islands as long as one of them does, so don’t expect them to step in to help Mauritius. They don’t care who they get the fishing rights from.

Naturally, if Britain tears up the surrender deal and keeps the Chagos islands, China won’t get fishing rights - and there are many good reasons why we should scrap the deal:

• Mauritius has no claim to the Chagos Archipelago. It specifically renounced any claim at independence in 1968.

• A 1966 British-US treaty requires Britain to keep sovereignty over the islands.

• The UN has called on Britain to pause the deal because it doesn’t respect the Chagossians’ right to self-determination.

• The “international law” Starmer claims we need to comply with is actually just a single non-binding judgment by a court that has no jurisdiction over the Chagos islands, and had no right to even discuss this case at all:

I note that the ICJ judge who issued the judgment is Xue Hanqin. She’s Chinese. She is in fact a member of the Chinese Communist Party, and a former official in China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Why are we letting foreign communists tell us what to do with our own land?

Anyway, back to the Maldives. It’s actually largely irrelevant what either they, Mauritius or China thinks about who owns northern Chagos waters, because until the handover deal is ratified by Parliament those waters are still ours. If the Maldives illegally sends a boat into our waters, it’s up to the British government to rapidly expel it. That shouldn’t even be difficult; after all, while CGS Dharumavantha is rather well armed for a “coast guard” vessel it’s still just a 436-ton glorified patrol boat with a three-inch gun. A Type 23 frigate is ten times the size and a lot more heavily armed, and should be able to send it packing easily enough.

Except we no longer have a spare frigate to send, so instead the Foreign Office has released a wimpy statement that “the question of sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago is between the UK and Mauritius.” Never mind that it’s actually a question for Britain alone, because it’s our land; all they can do is issue this snivelling legalistic non-event. No order to the Maldives to get its grotty little boat out of our waters. No warning of consequences if British sovereignty continues to be violated. Just a whine.

Well, this is what happens when you look weak. Soon enough, predators will start to wonder what they can get away with. Other countries will be watching the Maldivian incursion to see how we respond. And if we don’t respond - which we can’t, because the Royal Navy has only a handful of warships left and no new ones have been ordered since 2019 - there will be more incursions, more grabs at British territory.

The Chagos islands are just one of fourteen British Overseas Territories. Several of them are at risk of annexation by other nations - in every case, against the wishes of their inhabitants. The Falkland Islands and Gibraltar are the best-known examples, but the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus are also threatened, as are South Georgia and the British Antarctic Territory. You can bet that Argentina, Chile, Cyprus and Spain are watching with interest to see if Starmer’s government actually intends to do anything about this outrageous provocation by the Maldives.

So far, they haven’t done a thing. This weakness is putting the freedom - and perhaps even the lives - of British people in danger. We need a government that’s willing to spend the money to rebuild the Royal Navy, and that isn’t afraid to flex its muscles in defence of British interests. And we’re not going to get that government by voting for the same tired old parties.

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