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    1. The rules based system is severely under strain. As another Redditor posted a few days ago, we are entering a “might is right” phase and the quicker our politicians learn to adapt the better.

    2. Agreeable_Falcon1044 on

      The end result is the debt trapped Mauritius will be handing that base over to China. It’s the long game which Western nations don’t seem to get with their short term internal feuds

    3. Apprehensiv3Eye on

      > The ICJ ruling on Chagos supported by Ms Xue was not binding, but persuaded British government lawyers that controlling the islands carried legal risk.

      I would much prefer receiving strongly-worded letters from countries that aren’t worth listening to over jeopardising national security.

    4. Chagos has a GPS ground station installation that is critically important to the US military, so won’t be handed over to anybody (except maybe to America)

    5. This is the red line for me supporting Labour. If they do this deal they deserve to lose the next election.

    6. Well damn, I’ve been tentatively giving the government the benefit of the doubt on this deal but having a judge backing the Ukraine invasion making this judgement makes that really challenging. Maybe the UK needs to just say that they got the Chagos originally as part of a special military operation?

    7. AcademicIncrease8080 on

      The old “rules based order” is over, and it was always a bit of a sham anyway because most countries simply ignored things like ICJ rulings or international pressure.

      The UK establishment, stuck in its tiny monolingual Whitehall bubble on a rainy Island in the North Atlantic, does not appear to have realised that the old rules have ended and that we are entering a much more confrontational, turbulent and “traditional” approach to diplomacy and power.

      We should simply ignore the ICJ ruling. Giving a Chinese ally (or rather paying them tens of billions of pounds) to take around a thousand uninhabited tropical islands is… Absolutely bonkers. China could establish spy monitoring stations on those islands and the UK/US/NATO would not be able to do anything about it. Oh and Mauritius wants the waters for industrial tuna fishing, so it’s also not good for the marine ecosystem that is currently protected.

      I feel like the UK establishment is Theoden before Gandalf releases him from Sauroman’s curse. Just really sluggish, confused, unable to look out for our own interests.

    8. 1 of 15 Judges who voted in the case was Chinese….how is this even a story?

      The Telegraph also states The Chagos Islands were never part of Mauritius, which is not correct as they were part of British Mauritius and separated shortly before independence. Which is the key factor in the legal case as the UK agreed to not separate colonies before independence.

    9. purely a case of the traitor kier starmer giving away more british rights. the man is not to be trusted and will eventually be kicked out of power for mishandling his station.

    10. At this point the UK Gov needs to pull out and shrug their shoulders at any ‘advice’ that holding the islands is legally unwise. The rule of law is breaking down.

    11. Perfect example of how bad journalism is at the Terriblegraph. Strawman attack on **one** of the **nine** judges who were on the panel that made the ruling.