The former prime minister hit out at the agreement to hand over the Chagos Islands to China ally Mauritius.
Boris Johnson has warned the Chagos Island deal is being rushed through by Starmer (Image: Getty)
Boris Johnson warned the Chagos Islands deal is being driven by “lefty b*******” as Sir Keir Starmer rushes to push it through.
The UK agreed to hand over the islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius last month but there is speculation that US president elect Donald Trump could oppose the deal.
Critics have warned the move risks allowing China to gain a military foothold in the region have have raised concerns over the future of a US-UK military base on Diego Garcia, which is the largest of the islands.
Former prime minister Mr Johnson said giving up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands was “lefty b*******”.
He told The Telegraph’s Ukraine: The Latest podcast: “The whole thing’s a scandal.
There are concerns over the risk to the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia (Image: Getty)
“It’s driven by people who, frankly, hate the historic legacy of imperial Britain, who hate the very idea that we had a colonial past and want to do absolutely everything to efface the vestiges of that past, even if it means spectacularly shooting ourselves in the foot, cutting off our noses to spite our face and doing various other acts of pointless self-mutilation.
“It’s driven by pure Lefty politics and it’s a tragedy that Starmer has bought into this nonsense.
“I don’t know what the Trump administration will do with it now, but perhaps they will find a way of impeding it.”
Foreign Secretary David Lammy yesterday dismissed criticism of the Chagos Islands deal by the new prime minister in Mauritius and the incoming Trump administration in the US.
Final details of the legal text of the treaty are being worked out, with the plan to put the deal before Parliament for scrutiny next year.
The new Mauritian prime minister Navin Ramgoolam, a critic of the deal before he took office, reportedly expressed continued reservations after a meeting with the UK’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell on Monday.
Mr Lammy said: “ I’m very, very confident that this is a deal that the Mauritians will see, in a cross-party sense, as a good deal for them.”
Mr Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, warned in October that the agreement posed “a serious threat” to US national security by handing over the islands to a country allied with China.
Mr Lammy said: “This is incredibly sad. I know and I’m sad that there’s been so much politicking about this.
“This process begun under the last (UK) government and there were ministers who understand entirely why this is so important for our national security and global national security.
“The agencies in the US think this is a good deal. The State Department in the US thinks this is a good deal and most important of all, the Pentagon and the White House think this is a good deal.
“And that’s not just the principal politicians in those in those areas, it is the system.”
Under the terms of the deal, the UK-US military presence on Diego Garcia is expected to run for 99 years with an option to renew, with Britain paying a regular annual sum of money.
The Government has insisted it had to strike a deal to protect the ongoing operation of the base after an International Court of Justice ruling that the UK’s administration of the British Indian Ocean Territory was “unlawful” and must end.
