Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's costly Chagos deal has been branded "obscene" after confirming the agreement with Mauritius.In an announcement on Thursday, the Labour leader confirmed Britain's newly signed deal on the future of the Diego Garcia base, dubbed a "surrender deal" by critics across the political spectrum.FULL STORY HERE.
00:00But that's the point about it. I mean, because I've never heard the argument before.
00:04Well, it's been around. And what we've had is we've had two judgments against us already, one from the International Court of Justice, one from the from the UN General Assembly.
00:14Now, they were advisory, so we didn't have to comply with them.
00:17The next stage would be it would go to the to the UN Convention on the Sea.
00:23That would be legally binding. And the problem there is if Mauritius is actually aligned with China, if if international law said that we could not be there, that would mean that China could move in and have international law on their side.
00:40But why? But Mauritius is, I mean, further away from the Chagos Islands than we are.
00:45Well, no, I mean, we're six thousand miles away. I mean, it's about a thousand miles to Mauritius.
00:49It's never been. It's never been Mauritius. Exactly. They've never had a claim on the Chagos Islands.
00:54So to think that it's somehow rightfully theirs is is for the birds.
00:58But it's the amount of money. It's for the courts. I mean, the courts of the it is for the courts to decide who actually should own the amount of money that is going to be handed over to Mauritius is actually obscene.
01:10When you start digging down into the figures, 45 million pounds a year for 25 years to support projects for economic development in Mauritius.
01:21But this is a deal. OK, so this is like renting a house. This is a deal to actually lease a new base.
01:27So we can freeze our own pensioners, but we can pay for the Mauritian economy to be bumped up.
01:31Yeah, but this is a deal. So where's that coming from?
01:34Diego Garcia as a military base. Where's the money coming from? Because all we keep hearing from the Chancellor is that there's some enormous 22 billion pound black hole.
01:44You know, the one that we've always heard about.
01:45And we're forking out now. I mean, all right, we're not paying all this money up front. It's over 100 years.
01:50Yeah. But it's two million quid a week. I mean, by his conservative figures.
01:53Yes, yes, I know. But because we're leasing then a military base.
01:57I mean, the figures seem to be all over the place, in fairness, that the Telegraph reporting a 30 billion pound cost.
02:04It looks as if that's a kind of calculation on the back of a fag packet.
02:08But whatever the cost is, we're renting something.
02:11Inflation at 2% for 100 years is what that is.
02:15And the other programmes that Claire's spoken about there.
02:17Yeah. But I mean, at the moment, we're talking about about 100 million.
02:20But the figure is not so much important as the principle that if we want to retain that military base, this is the way to do it.
02:28We are renting it. It is like renting a house or something like that.
02:33So on the basis of that, we've got to pay some money out.
