Labour has revealed the “legal threat” which it claims forced it to give away the Chagos Islands. It’s bogus…
Defence minister Luke Pollard admitted in the Commons today that the legal basis for the “threat” is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea:
“Had we not signed the treaty, we could have faced further legal rulings against us within weeks, because the negotiations begun by the Conservatives had been stayed. Further legal rulings might have included arbitrary proceedings against the UK under annex 7 of the UN convention on the law of the sea, known as UNCLOS… A judgment from such a tribunal would be legally binding on the UK. It would impact on our ability to protect the electromagnetic spectrum from interference, and impair our ability to ensure access to the base by air and sea, to patrol the maritime area around the base and to support the base’s critical national security functions.”
One problem with that: The UK can and always has been able to exempt itself from cases under the convention which concern:
“disputes concerning military activities, including military activities by government vessels and aircraft engaged in non-commercial service, and disputes concerning law enforcement activities in regard to the exercise of sovereign rights or jurisdiction excluded from the jurisdiction of a court or tribunal”
Labour has itself admitted the UK’s use of the electromagnetic spectrum cannot be interefered with by rulings of the ITU. Oh dear…
There has been a big row in the Commons today over the matter with Tories pointing this out. Shadow Armed Forces Minister Mark Francois tells Guido:
“During today’s Commons Debate on Diego Garcia, the Government’s legal case collapsed, under close scrutiny. They finally revealed that the “legal threat” to justify their £35 billion surrender deal is based on the UNCLOS Treaty – from which we in Britain already have a clear opt out for “disputes concerning military activities” in Article 298. The whole case is a sham, as Parliament has today discovered.”
Labour and Starmer repeatedly refused to specify which grave legal threat forced the surrender. Now we know why…
Lucy Powell told Sky News that the Ed Miliband-Russell Brand interview happened in part because the ‘social media age’ had not begun by 2015:
“Look, I mean, he approached the Labour Party, he approached the campaign team, and we’re in very different times now. We weren’t in the social media age at the time – where you could maybe search things up and see allegations about somebody at the time. and as I say, if there was any suggestion at all, we were dealing with someone who was a known sexual predator at the time, then, of course, you know, no one would have done that. But as I say, he was a well known public figure. Lots of people from Hollywood to the BBC to many others gave this person a very, very powerful platform. And we didn’t know at the time, unfortunately. It was a different era.”