Keir Starmer stood for election promising to stand up for Britain's Overseas Territories. Now, with Labour driving legislation to surrender the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, the Prime Minister is being accused of doing the opposite of what his manifesto guaranteed, and of misleading the country to do it.
The contradiction could hardly be starker. In black and white, Labour's 2024 election manifesto committed the party to defending the sovereignty and self-determination of the British Overseas Territories. Critics argue the reversal is so complete that it amounts to a deliberate misrepresentation of what voters were promised.
In one of the most astonishing political about-turns in recent British history, Labour has pushed forward legislation to strip British sovereignty from the Chagos Islands, doing so without the democratic consent of the Chagossian people and without allowing full parliamentary scrutiny.
The broken pledge
The wording of Labour's manifesto left no room for doubt: the party would defend the sovereignty and the right to self-determination of the British Overseas Territories.
The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) was one of those territories. Despite this, Labour is now seeking to abolish BIOT altogether, transferring sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and substituting a long-term lease so that Britain can keep using Diego Garcia, one of the islands, for military purposes.
A promise to defend sovereignty has turned into a plan to rent it back. A promise to defend self-determination has turned into a decision forced through without the agreement of the very people whose history and lives are bound up in these islands.
Chagossians overwhelmingly reject the handover
Labour may claim this policy honours Chagossian wishes, but the facts point the other way. A global poll of more than 3,500 Chagossians, a striking sample given that only some 8,000 to 10,000 Chagossians exist anywhere in the world, found that over 99 percent want the islands to stay British.
What they want, overwhelmingly, is the right to go home as British citizens under British sovereignty, not as subjects of Mauritian rule. It is among the clearest democratic verdicts the Chagossian community has ever delivered, and the Labour government has decided to look the other way.
The contradiction is glaring. Labour claims to be delivering justice while ignoring the democratic voice of a displaced people who have time and again been made to live with decisions taken about them rather than alongside them.
The Lords consultation and government silence
The dispute deepened last month when the House of Lords carried out its own survey of the Chagossian community. Many of those taking part have condemned the exercise as flawed, too narrow and badly run. Because the survey demanded that Chagossians respond in English, a language a large number of them do not speak, several Chagossian organisations have rejected the whole process as unrepresentative and dismissed its findings outright.
The alarm grew further when videos surfaced online appearing to show Mauritian officials meddling in Britain's democratic process, allegedly filling in consultation responses on behalf of Chagossians who cannot speak English.
Ministers are due to publish their formal reply to the Lords survey on 18 December. Critics expect that response to trigger a serious political flashpoint, and to expose just how little notice the government plans to take of Chagossian opinion.
Adding to the uncertainty is a judicial review brought by the Great British PAC, which has yet to be decided and which could carry major consequences for the legality of the entire handover.
A scramble toward January
Once the government delivers its December response, the bill comes back to the Lords for its final reading in January. Only when that last stage is complete can the treaty be ratified.
In other words, Labour is forging ahead with giving away sovereignty over a British Overseas Territory while:
- the judicial review has not yet produced its ruling
- the Lords consultation has been discredited
- parliamentary scrutiny remains incomplete
- the Chagossians' overwhelming rejection of Mauritian sovereignty is being ignored
It makes no strategic or financial sense
Set aside the moral and democratic objections, and the government's plan still makes little sense in practical terms. Holding the islands under British sovereignty would spare British taxpayers billions in lease payments and defence costs over the long term. Instead, Labour intends to hand the islands away and then pay Mauritius for the privilege of renting back Diego Garcia, the vital UK and US military base that underpins security across the region.
This back-to-front arrangement has left defence analysts, parliamentarians and taxpayers asking the same question: why would any government willingly give up strategic territory, weaken its own negotiating hand, and lumber the country with fresh financial commitments stretching out for decades?
A reputation in freefall
Foreign Secretary David Lammy has tried to cast the decision as a strategic necessity, yet critics note that Britain could have kept access to the Diego Garcia base without giving up BIOT sovereignty at all. Legal experts caution that the move is constitutionally reckless, all the more so with a judicial review still pending and with no real democratic input from the Chagossian community.
The strategic objections run deeper still. Mauritius is a party to the Pelindaba Treaty, which bars nuclear weapons from being stationed in or moved through its territory or territorial waters. Analysts point out that the instant sovereignty changes hands, Mauritius would be legally bound to enforce those prohibitions. In practice that would neutralise US and UK nuclear strategic capabilities across the region and hand real leverage to a state with notably close ties to China.
Rather than showcasing integrity, transparency or respect for international law, Labour's handling of Chagos has cast serious doubt on its judgement, its competence and its readiness to keep its own manifesto.
A government at war with its own promises
The Chagos handover was meant to draw a line under the matter. Instead, Labour has manufactured a crisis.
A government that promised ethical leadership now finds itself accused of sidelining Parliament, ignoring a displaced community, leaning on an unrepresentative consultation, pre-empting a judicial review, and abandoning the very electoral commitments it claimed to treat as sacred.
Labour pledged that it would always defend the Overseas Territories. The Chagos process shows that, under this government, “always” lasts only until the moment it becomes politically awkward. The decision does more than shred a promise made directly to voters; it tells every Overseas Territory that manifesto guarantees are optional, expendable and liable to quiet reversal behind closed doors. And by handing sovereignty to a state drifting ever closer into China's strategic orbit, ministers raise profound questions about their judgement, their consistency and the worth of any future pledge.
You can read Labour's manifesto for yourself. On page 120 it states plainly: “Defending our security also means protecting the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, including the Falklands and Gibraltar. Labour will always defend their sovereignty and right to self-determination.”