Captain Calamity, Captain Capitulation, Captain Cock-up… take your pick (and I’m sure there are a lot less family-friendly iterations out there too) but Sir Keir Starmer is a man so spectacularly out of his depth it would be funny if it weren’t so serious and so dangerous for Great Britain.
Sir Keir, without a soupcon of Parliamentary consultation, has just given away the Chagos Islands – a crucial national asset in British Indian Ocean Territory. Crucial not so much to Britain by the way, but to the safety and security of the entire planet.
That particular capitulation stands alongside the flaccid acceptance of striking junior doctors’ pay claims and of course those of the militant, awful train drivers who held the nation to ransom for so long. Spectacularly damningly for supposedly socialist Labour, the only people Sir Keir has actually properly stuck the boot into since attaining power are Britain’s pensioners.
And to think, they used to call the Tories “the nasty party”.
The Chagos Islands decision is simply unacceptable in a country which regards itself as a democracy – one man, and a dreadfully weak one at that, has just altered Britain’s future, single-handedly. As Nigel Farage, who hopefully will be challenging the decision on Monday, pointed out “why wasn’t the capitulation over the Chagos Islands in the Labour election manifesto?”
But it’s much, much worse than some dinner-party debate. Starmer’s naivety is not just utterly shocking but very, very dangerous.
The Chagos Islands are home to Diego Garcia – a crucial UK/US airbase which serves as a watching station and a significant military presence in that part of the world. A check on a resurgent, emboldened China in other words.
Starmer claims we have a 99-year lease on Diego Garcia, with the option to renew.
But you really don’t need to be Nostradamus to see there is no way China will allow this. Beijing has been schmoozing the Government of Mauritius (who will get ownership of the Islands) for years. They signed a free trade agreement with Mauritius in 2019 and have funded almost 50 development projects on the island.
It is a version of sinister the Belt & Road scheme China has imposed on so many African nations where Beijing spreads free cash and technological support across countries – but it’s a Don Corleone deal and the Chinese will of course call in their favours very soon.
And they will do this in Mauritius too – demanding Mauritius kick out the Brits and the Yanks from Diego Garcia forever.
Giving China a much freer hand to enact its world domination plans, say by invading Taiwan.
Which brings me to part two of the horrible problem Starmer has created – this time over the other side of the world in the chilly South Atlantic.
Britain’s Falklands Islands.
Just hours after our Prime Minister’s capitulation over Chagos, Argentina honed in on Starmer’s lack of backbone and immediately vowed to recapture the Falklands, with foreign minister Diana Mondino boasting: “We will recover the full sovereignty of Las Malvinas.”
Sources say Argentine special forces are now poised to land in a remote corner of the Islands and raise their blue and white flag. The threat is being taken so seriously their British counterparts in the Falklands are on round-the-clock alert as any landing would be seen as an invasion in exactly the same way as it was in 1982 which triggered the Falklands War which cost 255 British lives.
A second Falklands War?
Don’t rule it out.
The only question is could Britain even fight a war in the South Atlantic?
In 1982 when Margaret Thatcher ordered a Task Force set sail for the Falklands the Royal Navy had 12 destroyers and 43 frigates.
Today it has just six destroyers and 12 frigates.
We will have to pray it does not come to that. But whatever the military implications there is no doubt that thanks to Starmer Britain looks weaker today, like a country ashamed of itself, and undergoing a weird self-flagellation.
This of course is the political world view of the left.
But it used to be merely the stuff of student debates; Now Keir Starmer is turning weakening and damaging Britain into Government policy.
