An ex-Royal Navy officer has slammed Labour’s decision to relinquish sovereignty over the Chagos Islands as “strategically illiterate”.
Rear Admiral Chris Parry took aim at the Government over the move while speaking to Reform UK’s Nigel Farage.
Mr Parry said: “It’s strategically illiterate. When the announcement came out, I was absolutely flabbergasted to tell you the truth.
“I think it is probably caused more by a Government that wants to display its decolonisation and ideological credentials than any strategic sense.”
Speaking to Mr Farage on his GB News show, the ex-Admiral added: “It won’t be long before you see Chinese fishing vessels and other predatory industries going in there.
“It’s an amazing surrender of British Overseas Island Territory and it’s given encouragement to other chancers like the people in Argentina and the Spanish with Gibraltar. It was a terrible message to send out that we are prepared to give up sovereign territory.”
Mr Farage has claimed there is “outright hostility” in the US to the UK’s deal with Mauritius to relinquish sovereignty over the Chagos Islands.
The Reform UK leader, who has been a long-time backer of President-elect Donald Trump and visited the US on his re-election, said incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz and defence secretary Pete Hegseth were both opposed to the deal.
The Government announced its decision to relinquish sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius last month, which they have argued “saved” a UK-US military base on Diego Garcia.
The agreement over the continued military presence on Diego Garcia is expected to run for 99 years with an option to renew, with Britain paying a regular annual sum of money.
Mr Farage warned the Government against being “at conflict” with the US, without whom the UK would “be defenceless”.
During an urgent question on the Chagos Islands deal, the Reform UK leader told the Commons: “I warned the Foreign Secretary six weeks ago in this chamber that it was an enormous mistake to do this, given that we had a US presidential election coming up on November 5.
“And if you say to me, ‘well, yes, it’s okay, the United States are fully in favour’ – really?
“I can tell you that the incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz has form on this, right back to when (former foreign secretary James Cleverly) was doing his best to give away the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands. Indeed, he wrote to Secretary of State (Antony) Blinken at the time.
“There is, I can assure you, having been in America last week, knowing also the incoming defence secretary (Pete Hegseth) very well, there is outright hostility to this deal.”
He added: “Whatever is said about a lease agreement, as we saw with Hong Kong, these agreements can very, very easily be broken.
“Diego Garcia was described to me by a senior Trump adviser as the most important island on the planet as far as America was concerned.”
Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty earlier said: “The base on Diego Garcia plays a critical role in countering an array of threats to regional and international security.
“Without legal certainty, the base simply cannot operate effectively; continued uncertainty would be a gift to our adversaries. This is why the agreement has been welcomed by all parts of the US system and by other critical regional security partners including India.”
The Chagos Islands have been in British hands for more than 200 years, but after Mauritius gained independence from France in the late 1960s, the inhabitants of the islands were forcibly expelled to make way for the base.
