Likely incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham is minded to try to complete Labour’s doomed Chagos Islands giveaway – the foreign policy blunder that played a substantial role in the downfall of Keir Starmer’s premiership. The change of Labour leader presented an opportunity to drop the deal for good…
According to multiple sources who are familiar with Burnham’s thinking, he has been heavily influenced by Starmer’s National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, whom he intends to keep in role initially. Powell referred to Britain’s vital strategic territory as “very tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean where no one actually goes”…
Powell’s personal commitment to the deal is absolute. Guido has exposed Powell’s longstanding proximity to China and fanaticism with completing the giveaway at all costs. Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, the other main advocate of the deal under Starmer, is thought to be leaving government. It’s all up to Powell now…
Continuation of Starmer’s Chagos policy by Burnham will enrage the Trump White House and derail Burnham’s wider attempt to reset relations with Washington. The President humiliated Starmer over the botched deal, publicly withdrawing US support and ultimately forcing the UK to ice the plan. Trump described Burnham has “extremely liberal” last month. Wait until he hears about Burnham’s plan to revive Chagos, which Guido understands the President is set to receive a briefing on shortly…
Keeping Starmer’s Chagos policy will also blow Burnham’s balance sheet. Guido already established that Burnham’s spending commitments so far total something like 250 billion pounds – much of that formally uncosted. You can add another £47 billion to that then – the estimate of the cost of the Chagos deal alone…
The Diego Garcia Bill was not reintroduced at the last King’s Speech after a massive parliamentary campaign to halt Starmer’s giveaway. Co-conspirators helped remove one Labour Prime Minister over Chagos, looks like it’s time to do it all over again…
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”