The lifeless corpse of Labour’s much vaunted Chagos giveaway is effectively dead now that President Trump is in the White House. But veteran international negotiator David Lammy is not giving up…
The foreign secretary is telling officials that he can personally intervene and convince President Trump that the agreement is still a good idea, according to sources with knowledge of the government’s plans. The UK Government has communicated that plan to Mauritius via diplomatic channels, assuring the Mauritians that Lammy’s personal capital with Trump will still swing it. The US administration is understood to have placed any approval of the UK deal on pause so that President Trump can study the details. Trump team sources tell Guido that the President is in the process of receiving national security briefings which will touch on the issue. Meanwhile, a growing number of US Senators and administration officials are publicly turning against the deal…
In Port Louis, Mauritius is simply playing for time and has instructed its ministers to renegotiate the deal again, now that there is a new US administration in place. It suits Mauritius as a domestic play to keep bidding up the price and changing the terms in its favour, even if the deal never happens…
Co-conspirators would be forgiven for wondering what magic Lammy will bring to the flailing process. He is on the record, after all, calling President Trump a “KKK/neo-Nazi sympathiser”…
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…”