gotchanewsdaily.com 
Yet Beijing undermined this by ultimately treating Hong Kong like the mainland. Large protests in 2019 against an extradition bill led to the extremely restrictive National Security Law in 2020, which purported to target secession, subversion and terrorism. “All the wishes of Hong Kongers for democracy have been crushed,” said Sari Arho Havrén, a Royal United Services Institute think tank associate fellow.
Back home, Starmer’s government has argued that international opinion made action on the Chagos Islands inescapable — but his domestic critics, including Brexiteer and Trump ally Nigel Farage, aren’t buying it. “When the Americans wake up to the fact that this has been done wholly unnecessarily, I wouldn’t be surprised if we find ourselves together with the European Union in their tariff regime,” Farage charged in the Commons Wednesday.
Starmer “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 U.S. administration by bending the knee to Mauritius and emboldening our enemies with his disastrous surrender deal,” said Tory Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel.
The government points to an International Court of Justice advisory opinion from 2019, which found Britain’s ownership of the islands violated international law, something the U.N. General Assembly endorsed.
Two years later, the U.N.’s maritime law tribunal reached the same conclusion. In the post-Brexit world, the government wants Britain to be a global player — and argues that being seen to uphold international law is key. It points out that the agreement includes a lease to keep the crucial military base operational under U.K. control for at least 99 years.
Yet West is not sold on the idea Britain needed to act so swiftly over an advisory opinion — and isn’t buying the fine print.
“I’m not convinced that we’ve got security of this base for 99 years,” he warned. And he added: “We’re sleepwalking into danger if we don’t get this sorted out.”
