The British empire still sends governments mad. Labour’s Foreign Office minister in charge of its lasting shreds, Stephen Doughty, has granted the isolated Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to the sovereignty of independent Mauritius. This modest act of decolonisation makes sense. But the government wants to retain a joint US-UK military base there. Why? Britain no longer rules India or Singapore. A base off India, even a shared one, is pure imperial show.
Doughty has 14 other “overseas territories” in his charge. Among them are Bermuda, Pitcairn, Montserrat, the Caymans, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. The union flag will still fly over them; the Royal Navy will keep guard and sing the national anthem.
Over the past half-century many territories, such as Belize, Tuvalu, the Seychelles and the Bahamas, have slid quietly into independence. Others have remained “dependent” on the king, with British citizenship and protection.
The cost of some has been allayed by Britain allowing them to become, after the Gulf states, the world’s greatest havens of illegal, unsourced and untaxed wealth. They are a menace to the world’s exchequers. They deprive British (and other) taxpayers of billions in revenue every year. Such is the power of the London banking lobby that no government dares touch them. Rachel Reeves’ £22bn “black hole” really exists somewhere between the Caymans and the British Virgin Islands.
Two dependencies remain problematic: Gibraltar and the Falklands. That Britain should have allowed Gibraltar, seized as a military base in 1704, to sour relations with Spain ever since is beyond absurd. Of course the citizens of the colony like their low-tax enclave, but this British Monaco is geographically part of Spain. Some deal on sovereignty should surely have sorted this by now. As recently as last April, the Tory foreign secretary, David Cameron, was reportedly negotiating a post-Brexit agreement, but the talks appear to have collapsed.
Meanwhile Doughty felt obliged last week to dismiss yet again Argentina’s repeated demand for the transfer of sovereignty of the Falklands. What is generally forgotten is that before the Argentinian invasion in 1982, Margaret Thatcher’s government was actually negotiating a transfer, despite concern expressed by the islanders. As with Hong Kong, history and geographical proximity made a deal common sense, possibly with a UN presence guaranteeing islander self-rule. Only the reckless action of Argentina’s military regime wrecked the talks. But that was 42 years ago.
Defending the islands’ 3,600 inhabitants is now costing Britain some £60m a year. This is inexcusable. The only future for the islands that makes economic sense lies with their adjacent mainland. If Thatcher could see this in 1982 – as she saw the need later to decolonise Hong Kong – why can’t Keir Starmer see it today? Instead he wants to burn money pretending to be an empire in both the Indian and the Atlantic oceans. Delusions of grandeur never cease.
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Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist