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Reply | Chagos Islands
at 07:20 25 May 2025
The alleged compromising of the base concerns the theory that Phillipe Sands floated in 2022 about interference with military communications (see link above), rather than the likelihood of a binding court judgement on the wider sovereignty issue. Sands suggested that the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency, could rule UK-US telecommunications on the islands illegal. However, plenty of other military experts say this is hogwash. As the US does not even recognise the jurisdiction of the ICJ (a UN body), it simply wouldn't let any UN agency stick its nose in to that extent. It is also worth recalling that the UK's agreement to ICJ jurisdiction excludes any matter affecting the operation of nuclear weapons, which would be a fig-leaf to resist any action by any UN agency that interfered with military operations. |
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Reply | Chagos Islands
at 15:51 24 May 2025
One interesting point is that the lawyer who acted for Mauritius in the 2022 Tribunal case is Philippe Sands - a close friend of Starmer. After the case he crowed that the verdict had rendered the UK's position untenable. Obviously, he was well rewarded for his work, and you might very well say that the cost to the UK tax payer has been very high.
https://fotbot.org/the-chagos-controversy-keir-starmer-philippe-sands-and-the-qu [Post edited 24 May 16:31]
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Reply | Chagos Islands
at 12:57 24 May 2025
Interesting if true, but I haven't seen the evidence of this nasty trio being against the handover of sovereignty. In both the 2019 ICJ case leading to the advisory decision and a 2022 International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea determination which rejected the idea that there was a Chagos Islands marine protection area, the Chinese and Russian judges voted for decisions that advanced Mauritian sovereignty claims.
The other interesting point relates to what Dr Winston said about self-determination. The principle that got all the publicity in the 2019 ICJ case was that when a colonial power gives independence to a former colony it should not divide that territory into separate jurisdictions (UN Resolution 1514 prohibits the breakup of colonies before independence). That always seems a stretch to me as the Chagos Archipelago is nearly as close to India as it is to Mauritius and the two were only brought together by the British colonial authorities at the time the UK took over Mauritius from the French as a matter of administrative convenience. Although classed as a Mauritian "dependency" the islands have never been economically dependent on Mauritius. There was no significant movement of population between the two and the language and cultures were different. I'd say the ICJ case was a deeply political one, bound up with an ideological commitment favouring de-colonisation and pushback against former colonial powers like the UK.
Most of the Chagossians up to the 1970s were contract workers from Africa and South Asia, who since the French colonial days had worked under contract on coconut plantations. The UK did treat the Chagossians badly, not least by forcibly relocating them away from the islands to meet a US requirement that the planned military base should be on an uninhabited island. The majority went to Mauritius, which treated them very much as 2nd class citizens, despite some money from the UK to support resettlement. The UK finally did the noble thing in 2022 by giving Chagossians who wished to apply the right to UK citizenship or British Overseas Citizenship (Nationality and Borders Act, 2022), and quite a large number live here now. In my view we'd have done better to give those Chagossians who wanted it, work at the military base rather than bringing in Filipino workers, but this would have been complicated. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Chagossians pursuing legal cases against Mauritius in the future to challenge its sovereignty, although the UN would have to do a sharp about turn if that was to get any support. |
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Reply | Chagos Islands
at 10:28 23 May 2025
It is complicated because, as I have said many times on the forum, international law is a fragile construction. The court you have in mind is presumably the ICJ, which Mauritius has tried to use to get the Chagos Islands on multiple occasions since the 1970s. The UK is the only permanent member of the UN Security Council that recognises the jurisdiction of the ICJ, but subject to certain conditions. These mean the UK does not accept the ICJ's jurisdiction over disputes between the UK and Mauritius (a member of the Commonwealth see (ii) below). Nations agree to be bound by the ICJ through a Declaration, which specifies when court jurisdiction will not apply, so this caveat does not break any treaty.
Below is online.
Declarations recognizing the jurisdiction of the Court as compulsory
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
22 February 2017
1. The Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland accepts as compulsory ipso facto and without special convention, on condition of reciprocity, the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, ln conformity with paragraph 2 of Article 36 of the Statute of the Court, until such time as notice may be given to terminate the acceptance, over all disputes arising after 1 January 1987, with regard to situations or facts subsequent to the same date, other than:
(i) any dispute which the United Kingdom has agreed with the other Party or Parties thereto to settle by some other method of peaceful settlement;
(ii) any dispute with the government of any other country which is or has been a Member of the Commonwealth;
(iii) any dispute in respect of which any other Party to the dispute has accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice only in relation to or for the purpose of the dispute; or where the acceptance of the Court's compulsory jurisdiction on behalf of any other Party to the dispute was deposited or ratified less than twelve months prior to the filing of the application bringing the dispute before the Court;
iv) any claim or dispute which is substantially the same as a claim or dispute previously submitted to the Court by the same or another Party;
v) any claim or dispute in respect of which the claim or dispute in question has not been notified to the United Kingdom by the State or States concerned in writing, including of an Intention to submit the claim or dispute to the Court failing an amicable settlement, at least six months in advance of the submission of the claim or dispute to the Court;
vi) any claim or dispute that arises from or is connected with or related to nuclear disarmament and/or nuclear weapons, unless all of the other nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons have also consented to the jurisdiction of the Court and are party to the proceedings in question. |
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Reply | Trump that...
at 10:09 23 May 2025
While the poor remain poor, the rich become richer. I came across some children of the Black African elite at a Chinese university a few years ago - wealthy and entitled. |
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Reply | Chagos Islands
at 09:40 23 May 2025
Some are saying that at £101m per year (reportedly with inflation proofing added) is going to cost around £30 billion in total. I think David Lammy has exaggerated the likelihood that an advisory judgement would quickly be translated into a binding injunction, but leave that aside for now. The thing that struck me yesterday was how the messages put out by the negotiating team change over time.
Just after taking over as lead negotiator, Blair's old mate Jonathan Powell said: “These are very tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean where no one actually goes. So I don’t think we should be too worried about losing that bit of territory. We’re probably losing more to tidal erosion in the East Coast than that.”
https://order-order.com/2024/10/04/uk-chagos-negotiator-we-shouldnt-be-worried-a
Now today in the Times, Lammy (who has been working closely with Powell on the deal) writes: "This remote outpost in the Indian Ocean is one of the UK’s most prized strategic assets: enabling counterterrorism, monitoring hostile states and allowing rapid joint deployments of British and US forces. While we can’t detail every operation, Diego Garcia has played a crucial role in missions against high-value Islamic State targets in recent years. It is the UK’s most important contribution to the UK-US security relationship and a pillar of global stability."
https://www.thetimes.com/article/b5c9d06a-f998-4976-92bd-2bf8541b8bed
What an absolute shower they are. [Post edited 23 May 10:10]
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Reply | Oli McBurnie : Swans very much aware of a potential free transfer
at 09:09 23 May 2025
It would be depend on price for me and would be a gamble. His goalscoring record since he left us is quite modest. The only plus I can see is that sometimes a player will come back to a team where he did well and rediscover his form. |
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Reply | Blunt Knives
at 11:44 22 May 2025
The problem with the proposal is that almost every household or eatery has knives with points at present They can be expensive and I imagine families and chefs will be reluctant to dispose of them. I recently bought a set of Sabatier kitchen knives that I'd be reluctant to waste my investment. I can't see that many people would want to grind the point off although I'd rather do that they bin them. I do have a very sharp Rosle bread knife of the prescribed shape that my wife has been known to use to carve the Sunday joint, so the alternative shape is practical. |
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Reply | Winter fuel allowance
at 13:14 21 May 2025
Difficult decisions ahead as to how this will work. The Government could just return to the status quo ante, but would then have to find the money. They are probably thinking of means testing with a higher threshold then the present eligibility level, but that often costs almost as much as is saved. |
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Thread | Lucy Connolly sentencing appeal rejected
at 08:32 21 May 2025
A few days have passed since three appeal court judges rejected Lucy Connolly's plea for a reduction of her 31 months sentence, and I sense that public disquiet about this judgement is growing. What Mrs Connolly said about migrant hotels was offensive, but there appear to be circumstances that mitigate the seriousness of the offense. Many are comparing Connolly's case with that of Ricky Jones, who was recorded on video stirring up a crowd about ‘disgusting Nazi fascists’ and telling them that ‘we need to cut their throats and get rid of them’, but is out on bail until August. My guess is that the recent court judgment will rebound on those who wanted a deterrent sentence by giving more credibility to the idea of two-tier justice. [Post edited 21 May 8:52]
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Reply | Migrant Smuggler - Jailed For 25 Years ...
at 08:08 21 May 2025
Problem is: can we afford to imprison them? Which ever way we handle illegal arrivals, all the options currently available are a huge burden on tax payers and/or increase national debt. |
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Reply | Are the rich fleeing the UK?
at 07:37 20 May 2025
People certainly say that about the Republic and the international corporations. The Irish middle class have done all right, but the plebs are starting to squeal, especially about access to health care in a system where you really need private supplementary insurance. |
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Reply | Two tier Keir reverses Brexit
at 06:38 20 May 2025
The 12 years of fishing access is the biggest disappointment to me. Although it is true that the deal "preserves the status quo", it halts a progressive shift that was in train to improve the situation of the UK sea fishing industry over several years. If people remember the original Brexit negotiations, the UK initially demanded an 80% reduction in EU quotas in UK waters, but the EU managed to get this down to 25% introduced gradually over several years. The last increment of this reduction comes in next year (and as far as I know that remain), but the fishing industry had hoped for more progress when annual negotiations came in. All this has brought just a 10% increase in UK quotas to date, so fishermen hoped for more. Understandably, fisherman, like the Scot interviewed on TV yesterday who had recently invested in a bigger boat, are now left very unhappy.
I wonder if we really needed to concede 12 years when 4 or 5 had been mooted. It seemed to me that Starmer made a tactical error in letting it be known that a deal was close and setting up a press conference for a given date. What seems to have happened is that the French played hard ball at the last minute (the early hours of the scheduled announcement day) and the UK caved in. Of course, the Government can say that the value of the fishing industry is small and they have their eye on the gains for other industries, but it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. There is a good account of the history of the fishing saga here.
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/explainer-fisheries/ [Post edited 20 May 6:44]
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Reply | Two tier Keir reverses Brexit
at 14:26 19 May 2025
At face value worse than I expected. 12 years unchanged EU access to our fisheries (unpicking what the EU agreed to give up in the original deal and meaning this is there for good), dynamic alignment with EU regulations to get access to the SPS agreement, paying to be allowed to bid for work under the EU defence fund, and a "youth experience" scheme about which Labour are not yet giving us full details. I wouldn't be surprised to see home uni fees for EU students and no Immigrant Health Surcharge. Overall the EU got even more than they were rumoured to be demanding. We got reductions in red tape and eGate access - not the same as material resources. I heard on the radio in the early hours that there had been a breakthrough, but this seems more like a cave in. I will be delighted if there turns out to be a silver lining, but don't see it at the moment. [Post edited 19 May 14:29]
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Reply | Lineker finally sacked
at 14:11 19 May 2025
Back in 2023 Lineker compared what the Tories said about migration policy (at a time when they were actually remarkably permissive about who they let in) as akin to Nazi language from the 30s. Then a week or two back he shares a post with the very same rat image that the Nazis actually used as an antisemitic slur. I suppose both episodes show he is no expert on Nazi antisemitism. When I saw he was helping with the BBC cup final coverage I turned over to ITV. [Post edited 19 May 18:24]
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Reply | Brave Israeli Eurovision contestant
at 08:07 18 May 2025
It is interesting that the Israeli entry finished second with the most public votes. The protestors may not have as much public backing as they suppose. |
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