Many who last week couldn’t have got within 500 miles of Mauritius on a map now can’t bear it taking the archipelago
hat a difference a week makes. Just last Wednesday, you could have put money on most MPs being totally clueless about the exact location of the? To be in with a shout, you have to know where Mauritius is. And most MPs wouldn’t get within 500 miles. The Indian Ocean is bigger than you think. And don’t get them started on Diego Garcia. Surely he’s the younger brother of the titular character in the 1974 Sam Peckinpah film Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
Having informed the world last week that a deal on the future of the Chagos Islands had been agreed with Mauritius,was rather obliged to go through the motions of officially telling the Commons on Monday afternoon. Cue outrage from the speaker and the opposition. How dare the government not tell MPs first. The Tories might have had a stronger case had they not regularly done exactly the same when they were in power. Thing is that governments always do exactly as they please.
As for the inhabitants that had been forcibly removed back in the 1960s and 70s, they were free to return to the uninhabited islands if they wanted. Providing they didn’t mind being governed by Mauritius, which was more than 1,300 miles away to the south-west. The only people – other than the Tories – who were unhappy with the outcome were the Chagossians themselves, who have been in a lose-lose situation for decades.
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