Tories express alarm at report saying cost of Chagos Islands deal has risen far beyond £9bn, saying it’s ‘madness’ – UK politics live

4.32pm.) Other Tories have been even more damning, with Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary and runner-up in the leadership contest, calling the deal “traitorous” and Starmer a “Quisling”. (See 4.47pm.) Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party has overtaken Labour for the first time in a leading national opinion poll (see 9.30am) said on social media:

This is a dreadful decision by Starmer.

Our relationship will be in tatters when the USA wakes up to what our Prime Minister has done.

Northern Ireland, saying that 53% of people waiting for a first consultant appointment there wait more than a year.

The Northern Ireland secretary quoted the figure – which contrasts with 4% of people in England waiting for a first consultant appointment waiting more than a year – as an example, not just of failures in the health service, but of wider problems with public services.

And he argued that the problem was not lack of money, but the lack of public sector reform in Northern Ireland over recent years.

Benn was giving a speech to commemorate the first anniversary of the revival of Stormont and its power-sharing executive.

Under devolution, the executive is supposed to be in charge of service like health and education in Northern Ireland. But since the Good Friday agreement it has been suspended many times, sometimes for years at a time, because of disputes between unionists and nationalists.

In his speech Benn said:

The challenge for public services is particularly acute in Northern Ireland, and nowhere is this more urgent or obvious than in health.

The facts are frankly shocking.

Waiting time performance against cancer care targets continues to deteriorate, corridor care is becoming more frequent and it is striking how many people in Northern Ireland are now going private.

More than a quarter of people in Northern Ireland are on a waiting list. That is more than double the figure in England.

53% of people waiting for a first appointment with a consultant are waiting for more than a year in Northern Ireland.

In England, that figure is 4%. That’s right, 53% compared to just 4%.

Benn said he agreed with recent comments from Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin first minister, who recently said that the state of the health service in Northern Ireland was “dire and diabolical”. He went on:

And this is despite UK Treasury data showing that spending per head on health is nearly £300 a year higher in Northern Ireland than it is in England.

It is absolutely not that health and social care staff are somehow not doing all they can.

On the contrary, they are working really, really hard to treat patients, but they are doing so in a system that clearly isn’t working.

And why isn’t it working? Because – over many years – the decisions necessary for systemic and not piecemeal reform to the health and social care system in Northern Ireland simply haven’t been taken.

Benn said the challenge for the executive was to “take the difficult collective decisions” to enable health minister Mike Nesbitt to reform health services.

He went on:

I frequently hear it said, however, that more funding is required from the UK government and that that is the reason why public services are in such a state.

But given the needs-based formula that is now in place, and given the increase in funding that the government has given, a lack of funding is not the impediment to public service transformation.

The real impediment has been the failure to reform the system.

The many missed opportunities to take decisions, or to apply lessons, from other parts of the UK where reform has happened.

After the speech Sinn Féin accused Benn of promoting a “Tory austerity agenda”.

Caoimhe Archibald, the Sinn Féin MLA (member of the legislative assembly) who was yesterday appointed economy minister in the executive, said:

Rather than advocating for the people of the north of Ireland, as his title suggests he should, [Benn] has become an apologist for a Tory austerity agenda which his own government has now adopted and which has stripped our public services to the bone.

commented on the latest Chagos Islands deal reporting. She says it is time for Keir Starmer to “be honest with MPs” about the cost.

When Labour negotiate, Britain loses.

Starmer’s foolish deal gets worse every minute. He is surrendering British territory and paying for the privilege.

It’s time for the PM to come to parliament and be honest with MPs about what his government is doing with the Chagos Islands.

3.49pm), but she’s been trumped (Trumped?) by Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary. He has put a lengthy post about it on social media, and it concludes:

There’s supposedly no money for winter fuel payments or an increase in defence spending, but Starmer has seemingly found a spare £18 billion of taxpayer money to squander on an ally of China.

Can you think of any other self-respecting nation that would do this to themselves

Quisling Keir cares more about his reputation amongst the international legal fraternity than what’s good for Britain.

This disastrous deal is nothing short of traitorous.

Robert Shrimsley, the FT’s chief political commentator, says on Bluesky that the tone of these comments suggest the Tories are “losing it” in the face of competition from Reform UK.

It’s perfectly legit for the Tories to oppose and attack the Chagos deal. Many will agree. But when a front-bencher @robertjenrickmp.bsky.social refers to Keir Starmer as a “quisling” (a traitor or collaborator) you have to wonder if the Tories are simply losing it in the face of Farage

(Of all the Tories commenting on this story this afternoon, the person who has sounded most reasonable has been Mark Francois [see 3.49pm] – which is probably not something that has every been written by the Guardian before today.)

Chagos Islands deal.

Asked about the report (see 2.49pm), which has led to the Tories describing the deal as “madness”, a No 10 spokesperson repeatedly said the government would not be giving a running commentary. He said:

I’m not going to give a running commentary on the deal. Once an agreement is reached, further details of the treaty will be put before both houses for scrutiny and treaty ratification in the usual way.

Asked specifically if it was true that the deal will now cost the UK around £18bn, and that Mauritius will now have a veto over any decision to extend the UK’s lease on Diego Garcia beyond 99-years, as the Times reports, the spokesperson would not comment.

Asked why the Mauritian national assembly seemed to be getting more information about the deal than the UK parliament, the spokesperson said:

There’s a process. Once an agreement is reached, further details of the treaty will be put before parliament in the usual way.

Asked if the costs of the deal would be categorised as defence spending, and count toward reaching the 2.5% of GDP target for defence spending, the spokesperson would not give a running commentary.

The Times reports Navin Ramgoolam, the Mauritian prime minister as telling his national assembly that the UK has effectively doubled the £9bn price the UK will pay for the deal. It quotes Ramgoolam as saying:

They had agreed to a package for 99 years, but not inflation-proof. The exchange rate — because it’s in dollars — would be fixed once and then last 99 years. How can that be? Any ordinary fifth-form, sixth-form student would agree that you know inflation exists. What is the point of having money and having half of it by the end? This is what would happen — we made the calculation.

UK government sources have rejected suggestions that the final cost will be about £18bn. They point out that Ramgoolam did not put a figure on the cost of the deal when he was speaking in the national assembly.

2.49pm.)

Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, has issued a statement claiming that Keir Starmer is motivated by “leftie shame” at Britain’s history. She said:

It seems Keir Starmer has learnt absolutely nothing – and is still putting his leftie shame of our country’s history over our national security, and our longstanding relationship with our closest ally.

He has the audacity to tell the British people they will foot the bill and pay for the indignity of his surrender of the Chagos Islands, as he isolates the new US administration by bending the knee to Mauritius and emboldening our enemies with his disastrous surrender deal.

Starmer and David Lammy must urgently explain their epic failure of diplomacy which is putting out special relationship at risk while they play pathetic gesture politics.

In fact, negotiations with Mauritius over the transfer of sovereignty started when the Conservative goverment was in office. The current government, like the last one, says a deal is needed because the UK kept losing cases in international courts over the sovereignty issue.

As Christopher Hope from GB News reports, Mark Francois, a shadow defence minister, has also attacked the proposal.

Referring a Times report saying the cost to the UK government of the deal has in effect doubled, rising to about £18bn (over a century – but with the costs frontloaded), Francois said:

It is utterly unacceptable that Mauritian MPs seem to know more about this deal than our own MPs in parliament.

With the defence budget already under immense strain, the government not only can’t say how much we’d be paying to rent back our own islands, they don’t even know which department would foot the bill. If the reported £18bn figure is true, this is financial and strategic madness.

Ofsted to tackle its key problem which is reliability, a former senior government adviser told MPs on the education committee today.

Sam Freedman, a policy expert and former adviser in the Department for Education during Michael Gove’s tenure, said he had “quite a lot of worries” about the new Ofsted report card, unveiled on Monday by the chief inspector of schools Sir Martyn Oliver.

Under the proposals, schools will be graded in eight individual areas on a five-step scale, ranging from “exemplary” to “causing concern” with a separate evaluation of safeguarding. Inspections currently look at a maximum of four to six areas on a four-step scale from “outstanding” to “inadequate”.

Freedman told the committee:

I’m worried that this makes it harder for Ofsted to tackle its real issue which is reliability and consistency of inspection, and does not actually deal with any of the concerns schools have and possibly makes it harder for parents to use as well.

The committee, which is considering the impact of children’s wellbeing and schools bill as it makes its way through parliament, also heard from Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, who dismissed concerns that the bill will curb vital academy freedoms, calling instead for greater scrutiny of multi-academy trusts (Mats).

He accused some Mats of “misusing their freedoms badly”, citing reports of financial mismanagement, excessive CEO pay (Harris Federation boss Sir Dan Moynihan’s salary exceeds £500K, according to a report in SchoolsWeek), cuts to maternity and sick leave and high turnover rates among academy staff.

The committee also heard from Clare Canning, head of the Broadleaf Home Ed Co-op in Hmapshire, who raised concerns about the impact of the proposed legislation on parents who choose to home educate.

The bill outlines plans for a national register to identify and track children not in school, while parents seeking to educate their child at home will face greater scrutiny. Canning said it would place an “overwhelming burden” on families and questioned whether it was workable.

Chagos Islands “in the coming weeks”, the prime minister of Mauritius has told his parliament.

According to PA Media, Navin Ramgoolam told the Mauritian national assembly today that Starmer had discussed the prospect of a deal with him in a telephone conversation on Friday. Ramgoolam said:

The British prime minister informed me that he intends to push ahead with the agreement reached between Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the Chagos archipelago.

We remain confident that it will reach a speedy resolution in the coming weeks.

The UK had reached an agreement on returning sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius with the previous Mauritian government last year, but Ramgoolam insisted on renegotiating the deal when he came to power in November. Under the deal the UK will continue to have control over the joint UK/US military base on Diego Garcia for at least another 99 years. The UK government said the Biden administration was in favour of the deal, but Starmer wants the Trump administration to approve it too before he signs it off.

Ramgoolam told the national assembly:

President Trump is not a wolf. Let him see if the agreement is good or not.

Now the British have, late in the day, decided that, yes, it is better to let the new administration have a look, that is what the situation is.

Under the original deal, the UK was due to pay £9bn in instalments for the 99-year lease. According to a report in the Times, Ramgoolam said that that payment was in effect being doubled, because the orginal deal did not make allowance for inflation.

He also said that, after 99 years, Mauritius will have a veto over any proposal to extend the lease. Originally the UK could extend it unilaterally.

At the lobby briefing this morning Downing Street said it had “no update” on the situation.

this advert that was circulated on social media.

55% of Britons think leaving the EU was a mistake, and that only 11% of people think Brexit has been a success. These numbers have been going up. But YouGov polling also shows that Reform UK, which is the successor party to the Brexit party and which is led by Nigel Farage (second in the top 10 of people who made Brexit happen, according to the Independent’s John Rentoul), is getting more and more popular. (See 9.30am.)

There are at least three answers to this. To some extent they overlap, but it is helpful, and neater, to separate them out.

1) For many people voting for Brexit was more about disrupting the status quo than leaving the EU. Ardent Brexiters, like Farage, had very strong and coherent objections to EU membership. But the vote to leave cannot be understood without also recognising that it harnessed disruptive, anti-establishment sentiment that has become increasingly powerful since the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of social media. This has been well documented by many people, over many years, including in a report from the Tony Blair Institute only last week. It said:

Around the world, democracy is changing shape. Trust in politicians is declining, as is respect for all kinds of authority. Traditional political loyalties have dissolved as economic and social forces buffet people’s lives and a pervasive sense of decline takes hold. More and more voters seek easy solutions to complex problems.

People who are fed up with the status quo vote for insurgents. And Farage is able to pose as an insurgent, just as he did in 2016 (and despite getting much of his funding from plutocrat donors) because he has never been in government.

2) The Brexit vote was also in part a protest against high levels of immigration, and this issue remains at the heart of Farage’s electoral pitch. In 2016 he was arguing that the end of free movement would address what he saw as the problem. But net migration remained high, and Reform UK, now primarily an anti-immigration party, is proposing more extreme measures.

3) Winning elections is not necessarily about being right anyway. In theory, politicians associated with bad ideas and flawed policies get punished by the electorate. Farage ought to suffer as a result, because there is a growing consensus that Brexit has been one of the biggest policy failures in modern UK history. But that is not happening because the theory is wrong, and voting isn’t as rational as it could or should be. The political scientists Chrisopher Achen and Larry Bachels set out this argument in their 2016 book, Democracy for Realists. They argue that “group and partisan loyalties, not policy preferences or ideologies, ar fundamental in democratic politics” and that policy, ideology and record count for little if voters just want change.

Elections that ‘throw the bums out’ typically do not produce genuine policy mandates, not even when they are landslides. They simply put a different elite coalition in charge … The parties have policy views and they carry them out when in office, but most voters are not listening, or are simply thinking what their party tells them they should be thinking. That is what an honest view of democracy looks like. It is a blunder to expect elections to deliver more.

This is not a consensus view. But Achen and Bachels are right to say the electoral process does not necessarily reward people with the best record or ideas. Also Farage can argue that since he was not in charge of implementing Brexit, if it did go wrong, that wasn’t his fault.

11.44am.) In a statement ahead of the meeting, Davey said:

His attempts to threaten a Nato ally with military force are dangerous and wrong, and will just embolden the likes of Putin who want to see the west divided.

I hope Keir Starmer will express the UK’s total solidarity in his meeting with the Danish prime minister today. The UK has a proud history of standing with our allies when their sovereignty is threatened, and we must do the same with Denmark now.

In public, ministers and No 10 have been very restained in what they have said about President Trump implicit threat to use military force to seize Greenland, which belongs to Denmark. While siding with Denmark, No 10 has avoided criticising Trump and described his comments as hypothetical.

Source: theguardian.com