Simon Jenkins questioned on Tuesday whether Britain is maintaining colonialism in the Malvina Islands, after the country handed over sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius last week. He mentioned the Chagos news and reviewed the 14 overseas territories that continue to respond to the British government.
“Over the past half-century, many territories, such as Belize, Tuvalu, the Seychelles and the Bahamas, have been quietly sliding towards independence. Others have remained ‘dependent’ on the king, with British citizenship and protection,” says the columnist, who also raises a criticism in this regard.
“The cost for some has been eased because Britain has allowed them to become, after the Gulf states, the world’s biggest havens for illegal, unsourced and untaxed wealth. They are a menace to the world’s public coffers. They deprive British (and other) taxpayers of billions of dollars in revenue every year. Such is the power of the London banking lobby that no government dares touch them. Rachel Reeves’ £22 billion ‘black hole’ actually exists somewhere between the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands,” he says, referring to those two Caribbean countries.
He then shifts the focus to the “two dependencies that remain problematic”, referring to Gibraltar – disputed by Spain – and the Malvinas – claimed by Argentina, in a dispute that led to a war in 1982.
"That Britain allowed Gibraltar, taken over as a military base in 1704, to sour relations with Spain ever since is beyond absurd," he says, referring to the territory located south of Spain.
“Of course, the citizens of the colony like their low-tax enclave, but this British Monaco is geographically part of Spain. Some agreement on sovereignty should surely have sorted this out by now,” says Jenkins , mentioning that last April, the then British chancellor – and former prime minister – David Cameron was supposedly negotiating a deal, which seems to have failed.
Referring to the Malvina Islands, the journalist mentions that last week comparisons arose between Chagos and the Malvinas, which led the current Foreign Secretary, Stephen Doughty , of Keir Starmer's Labour government, to "once again dismiss Argentina's repeated demand for the transfer of sovereignty of the Malvinas."
“What is often forgotten is that before the Argentine invasion in 1982, Margaret Thatcher’s government was negotiating a transfer, despite concerns expressed by the islanders. As with Hong Kong, history and geographic proximity made a deal, possibly with the UN presence guaranteeing self-rule for the islanders, common sense,” Jenkins says. “Only the reckless action of Argentina’s military regime scuttled the talks. But that was 42 years ago,” he adds, referring to the Malvinas War during the governments of Leopoldo Galtieri in Argentina and Thatcher in Britain.
“Defending the islands’ 3,600 inhabitants now costs Britain around £60 million [about $78 million] a year. This is unjustifiable,” the author questions. “ The only future for the islands that makes economic sense is on their adjacent mainland,” he says, referring to the islands’ proximity to Argentina.
“ If Thatcher could see this in 1982 – as she later saw the need to decolonise Hong Kong – why can’t Keir Starmer see it today? Instead, he wants to spend money pretending to be an empire in both the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic,” the author says. “The delusions of grandeur never cease,” he concludes.
Fountain:
