There was for a time the vaguest sense that things had got better since Andy Burnham took charge. That the insanity and inanity of Starmerism had finally bitten the dust. In some narrow respects this is true, yet in the sphere of foreign policy there remains a continuity idiocy which threatens to make Britain even more of an embarrassment than it already is. Key in this are two dismal figures: Luke Pollard and Jonathan Powell.
The catastrophically unimpressive Pollard – the sort of defence minister you’d find with a sticker slapped onto his head in the middle aisle of Aldi – claimed on Sky News this morning that the best way to secure the British military base on Diego Garcia was to give it away. Again, as a testament to the ‘through the looking-glass world’ in which we now live, nobody seems to be able to articulate why surrendering the Chagos Islands is a better deal than not doing so. They just state it again and again. Maybe a better deal does exist but she just goes to a different school. Pollard sat in front of Sophy Ridge, repeating his taglines. War is peace, freedom is slavery, inexplicably taking £35 billion from the defence budget and handing it to Mauritian treasury officials is a great use of taxpayer funding, actually.
These people seem to just have the ghost of Harold Bishop whispering in their ears
‘That’s why conversation with a good friend is important and that’s why we will continue to undertake that,’ he spluttered when confronted with the fact that the Americans thought it was a stupid idea. Quoting the Neighbours theme tune is all this government seems to now have in defence of something so obviously cretinous. At least Starmer and Hermer had their long-term, professional commitment to international treachery; these people seem to just have the ghost of Harold Bishop whispering in their ears.
Presumably due to the risk of him encountering sharp objects elsewhere, Pollard was also allowed onto Times Radio. Here he was asked more explicitly about how on earth a surrender agreement was safer than what we have now. It wasn’t the same, ‘due to decolonisation’ apparently. Herein lies the problem, we currently have people in government who accept the deranged grammar and vocabulary of the Chinese Communist party in trying to destabilise the West. Having Pollard even use these ridiculous terms about sovereign territory is akin to asking Anthony Blunt to pass comment on national security issues.
Amid the great cloud of turd, a sliver of a silver lining. Too many MPs, especially under Starmer, have hesitated to call out the clear injustice and stupidity of this Bill from a patriotic, left-wing perspective. All credit then to Dan Carden of Liverpool Walton, a member of the Blue Labour faction, who asked the pretty obvious question about how it might go down with people whose retirement plan doesn’t hinge on treachery and who don’t like seeing taxpayer money pointlessly squandered, i.e. most of the British electorate.
Carden’s statement is worth repeating. ‘Just say to any of them, go meet one of your constituents, try and explain the Chagos deal to them, and see how it goes down.’ He warned about the message it would send to our international foes. ‘It might be an idea to drop this terrible policy because you’re going to get beaten around with it, and then you get the Falklands.’
This is not rocket science, but while the Mandelson-adjacent, ideally future Tower resident Jonathan Powell still advises people as foolish as Burnham and Ed Miliband on national security, it seems likely that such wisdom will go unheard.
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