Ben Judah | Britain is squandering an empire

Ben Judah spent time as a special adviser to David Lammy at the Foreign Office, which means he worked on the Chagos deal, knows what Diego Garcia actually does, and cannot tell you.

What he can tell you is that the deal was initiated by David Cameron, pushed hard by the Biden administration, and that the Americans were genuinely considering cutting Britain out entirely and handing the islands directly to Mauritius. Once you understand that, the deal looks rather different.

It also turned Ben from a progressive Atlanticist into something closer to a Britanno-Gaullist — because the Chagos story is really a story about what happens when you are completely dependent on an ally who keeps changing its mind.

Tom, Calum, and Ben discuss:

* What Diego Garcia actually does, and why it gives you vertigo: Ben can’t tell you under the Official Secrets Act. What he can say is that in the 1960s the Americans identified these remote islands, halfway to everywhere and commanding the approaches to India and China, as the ideal location for certain supercapacities that only a true hyperpower could build. Britain got access in exchange for staying. The deal was extraordinary value. It is also not available anymore.

* Why the deal was inevitable, whoever was in government: The legal perimeter was collapsing through lawfare. Mauritius was on the verge of binding rulings. The Americans — under both parties, across multiple administrations — were telling London the same thing: do a deal or we pull the investment and move the capacities to Hawaii. “The only way Britain could hurt us is by not doing this deal.” Cameron started the negotiations. Labour finished them.

* The Chagos problem is really the America problem: Being bullied into a deal by one part of the American system, unable to rely on the other part to hold indefinitely, watching the asset be used as a tool of American domestic politics. “It’s a really sorry story, but the problem is our relationship with America.” Ben’s Damascene conversion to Anglo-Gaullism happened in the Foreign Office.

* Britain is squandering its overseas territories: A map on the UN website lists Britain as having more colonies than anyone else put together. Almost every single one is in some kind of crisis. British Virgin Islands: money laundering, corruption, Russian and Chinese influence. Turks and Caicos: Haitian gangs. Pitcairn: fifteen inhabitants, one young person left, no groundwater. St Helena: 4,000 people on one of the most strategically crucial islands in the Atlantic. “We might wake up in 80 years, a weaker Britain cornered by lawfare, no inhabitants, and how can we prove we should stay?” The French made their territories overseas départements with seats in the National Assembly. Marine Le Pen campaigns in Réunion. Nobody in the British cabinet visits Bermuda.

* The case for overseas kingdoms: Ben’s plan, developed during his time at the Foreign Office, is to incorporate the territories as overseas kingdoms of the United Kingdom, give them seats in the House of Lords, run them from a central ministry rather than the Foreign Office, and remove them from the UN’s naughty list. “There is no reason there should always be a very small population in the Falklands. If these islands belonged to the Americans or the Chinese, they would have dreams for them. Where are ours?”

* The left needs to discover futurism: AI, biotech, hydrogen, fusion — all right-coded, all ceded to the right by default. “That is f*****g stupid.” The degrowth movement is Luddite moralism that doesn’t understand what it’s talking about. “If you’re centre-left and you’ve got a friend who’s a de-growther, please pitilessly make fun of them.” What’s needed is a progressive futurism: grab the technologies of the 21st century, deploy them for better outcomes for British people. De Gaulle came to power when France had nineteen governments in ten years and a quagmire in Algeria, and threw the whole country into a quest for French modernity. There’s something in that.

Plus: what the Americans really think of British access to their supercapacities, why Malta’s bid to become an overseas kingdom was killed by Treasury mindset, the military perimeter that goes unspoken in every public discussion of the Chagos treaty, and whether the right needs to own up about Brexit’s role in the Boriswave.

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