Chagos Islands - More Faux Outrage

If ever an example were needed to show the yawning chasm between the reporting on Tory Governments, and that on Labour ones, once more the opposition has come riding to the rescue, as the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press marks the transfer of the Chagos Islands’ status from that of British Overseas Territory to part of the Republic of Mauritius.

The recent history of the Chagos can be put directly: Mauritius, which included the islands, was seized by the British in 1810, and as recently as 1965, the Chagos were split off from Mauritius and the islanders expelled so that an airbase could be built there. Mauritius was then given its independence from its former colonial masters in 1968.

More recently, to quote the Wiki entry, “Ruling on the sovereignty dispute between Mauritius and the UK, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has ordered the return of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius”. So they have now been returned, effectively minus Diego Garcia, the atoll where the UK/US air base has been built. So what do those Stateside say?

As the BBC has reported, “US President Joe Biden welcomed the ‘historic agreement’ … He said it secured the future of a key military base which ‘plays a vital role in national, regional, and global security.’” Then comes one more item to consider: when he was Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly was moving towards a very similar deal with Mauritius.

So what has Cleverly said when what was essentially his deal was signed off? As if you need to ask. He called his own deal “weak”. His fellow Tory leadership candidate Tom Tugendhat “argued the deal had been ‘negotiated against Britain's interest’ and it was ‘disgraceful’ that such talks had begun under the previous Conservative government”. His own party was poo!

But the whining of what Robin Day memorably and correctly called Here Today And Gone Tomorrow Politicians was nothing when put alongside the barrage of spiteful bad faith emanating from the Tory press. The Murdoch Times dispensed with reality as it whined “PM defies US to cede Chagos”.
That’s the same US whose President just backed the deal.

Equally clueless was the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, claiming “Fears for future of Gibraltar after Chagos Islands giveaway”. The deal has Sweet Jack to do with Gibraltar, or indeed any of the other British Overseas Territories. But the pièce de résistance was excreted by the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker, in today’s Daily Mail.

Here it comes: “The Chagos Islands have belonged to Britain since 1814 and include the strategically vital Diego Garcia military base. Yesterday, in a deal condemned as a shameful and dangerous capitulation, Labour agreed to hand them to Mauritius - which lies 1,300 miles away and is an ally of China … STARMER’S SURRENDER”. Why oh why oh why oh why oh why?!?!?

A headline selecting its facts very carefully: the UK and US keep control of Diego Garcia, the islands were part of Mauritius before the UK’s act of splitting them off in 1965, and Mauritius is free to make alliances with whom its democratically elected Government wishes. Cue another nay-sayer.

Yes, the Mail has exhumed the punditry career of Dan, Dan The Oratory Man! “Labour are surrendering to a Chinese puppet state” he claims. Jonathan Portes has corrected this flat-out lie, “Mauritius is pretty much level with the UK on the Economist Democracy Index, and ahead of US”, adding “I see Dan Hannan's self-proclaimed devotion to democracy and the rights of nation-states to make their own decisions doesn't extend to Africans”.

And all the while, one thought enters time and again: had this deed been done by a Tory Government, the Murdoch and Rothermere press would not have said boo. Nor would the Telegraph, whoever ends up controlling it. Also, the BBC report explains what the press doesn’t want us to know: “Brexit left many European nations reluctant to continue backing the UK’s stance in international forums”. The weakening effect of leaving the EU.

The Tories and their press pals are full of crap. But you knew that already.

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Bozo, The Mail, And Royally Lying

While the Tories spend their conference time demonstrating just how utterly wacko the party has become, to the extent that James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat come over as the most sane choices to succeed Rishi Sunak as leader, the deeply dishonest individual who set them off in that direction is demonstrating just what privilege and entitlement means.

To no surprise at all, that individual is disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who now has a memoir out titled Unleashed, serialised in the Daily Mail, still overseen by the boiling lump of spiteful rage, the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre. The serialisation shows us the privilege enjoyed by both author and newspaper.

It also shows us that, had a title like the Guardian or Mirror published what the Mail did, they would have been pilloried endlessly for it, and that the Mail would have been in the vanguard of such action. But such is the climate of fear around the Northcliffe House bunker, the Mail titles can get away with it. See also under “if it had been a Labour politician, especially Corbyn”.

To see this privilege in action, let’s look at Bozo’s response to Partygate. “Without belabouring this weary business, I think I made several catastrophic mistakes in the handling of the story”. He only thinks he screwed up. Maybe he wasn’t actually there when he was snapped leading the toast.

Do go on. “I should have been far more robust at the outset. I tried to defuse public anger by a series of rather pathetic apologies, even though I zero about the events for which I was apologising”. Bullshit. He was there, and his pals at the Mail were giving him suitably robust cover, such as “The cake remained in its Tupperware container”, which was also a lie. Have another go.

“My grovelling just made people even angrier - and made it look as though we were far more culpable than we were”. More bullshit. There was no grovelling. Bozo denied everything, then got caught lying. But the most obvious lying, and demonstration of entitlement, comes when Bozo gets on to the Royals, starting with “BORIS: MY ‘MANLY PEP TALK’ WITH HARRY IN BID TO STOP MEGXIT”. There was no pep talk. He was lying again.

Don't f***ing mention me again or I'll doxx you, c***

Thus demonstrating that he is in the same dishonesty league as Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and Combover Crybaby Donald Trump. All three talked up by our free and fearless press; all three congenital liars, united in their ineptitude and lack of empathy towards anyone except for Themselves Personally Now. And then came the pièce de résistance.

Successive Prime Ministers have not let slip even the most inconsequential detail of their audiences with the Queen. Nor have Liz Truss, Sunak, or Keir Starmer said anything about their chats with Brian. And to disclose any detail concerning the monarch’s health - unless the monarch decrees that the detail be made known - is Streng Verboten. Unless it’s the Mail and Bozo.

After the unintentionally hilarious admission that Brenda actually read her briefing notes and he didn’t - and so learnt the contents from her telling him about them - comes the breaking of confidence which, had any left-leaning politician made it, and any not right wing paper reported it, would have had the press establishment screaming the house down.

“I had known for a year or more that she had a form of bone cancer, and her doctors were worried that at any time she could enter a sharp decline” tells the Great Bozo, as if it were public knowledge, a kind of throwaway line. He’d already lied about having a “lack of general bitterness” about having to leave Downing Street. Chris Ship, ITV News’ Royal Editor, was unimpressed.

“Given Queen Elizabeth chose not to reveal her medical condition - and her death certificate recorded the cause as ‘old age’ - it’s highly unlikely she gave Boris Johnson permission to reveal in his book, two years later, that she had, in fact, been diagnosed with bone cancer. You wonder why the former PM felt compelled to break that confidence?” Because Bozo is a total shit.

Good of him and the Dacre doggies to show the rest of the world what privilege, entitlement and the nature of being protected really means, mind.

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