Defence Secretary Wes Streeting spoke about the Chagos deal on Sky News after Burnham complained that he “inherited” it last night and suggested it would be changed:
“I was a member of the Cabinet that agreed the deal with the government of Mauritius, and I stand by the decision that was taken, I’m not going to try to absolve myself of it now.
But at the same time, the principle we followed all the way through is that it needs to have the support of the Americans. So objectively, in the absence of support from the Americans, is this deal good enough? No. It needs to have the support of the Americans.
We will work together to get to a point where the both the governments of Mauritius and the UK, but also the Americans can sign up to this because this Diego Garcia is extremely important to the Americans as well as to us and our collective security. So the objective here is to safeguard that base and its capability, not just now, but for the long term, because it’s that important to us.”
The only way to fix the deal is to scrap it altogether…
Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked John Healey: “Just finally, I mean Andy Burnham has been very clear he wants Britain back in the European Union in his lifetime. Do you?”
The Chancellor replied: “I’m older than Andy Burnham. I don’t expect to see that.”