Guido revealed last week that Philippe Sands, Starmer’s close friend and Mauritius’ chief legal counsel on Chagos since 2010, boasts of how great it is that he is be celebrated for defeating and ‘humiliating’ Britain in the UN’s courts. He doesn’t have quite the same zeal when it comes to launching attacks on another country: China…
Sands was interviewed at the Christian Aid Conference in just October last year. Interviewer Nick Spencer wrote up their discussion on international law:
“I put it to him that, even post-1945, we face similar problems, and not just in obvious conflict zones such as Ukraine and Palestine. One of the objections that people level against international human-rights law is that the West — albeit often reluctantly — does acknowledge its authority, whereas countries such as China are less inclined to do so.
He is not persuaded. “Chinese initiatives [are] all underpinned by rules of international law. China needs international law more than anybody. All of their foreign investments, all of their trade, is premised on a system of rules. They are compliant with 99.9 per cent.”
Really? I push back. Hong Kong? Xinjiang? Taiwan? He concedes the point, but counters that it’s hardly just China that is open to the accusation of hypocrisy here. The Iraq War did huge damage to the West’s much-vaunted commitment to international law.”
Downing Street now suggests the Chagos deal won’t be signed until Trump looks at it post-inauguration. Seeing as this is the man who has done the most to force the deal on Britain, the President-elect may have some additional reservations…
Sarah Pochin at Reform Scotland’s manifesto launch event: “I really wanted to come on in a Reform tartan burka, but apparently I wasn’t allowed… One day let’s do one of these events not live-streamed. We’ll do all the naughty stuff…”