The refusal of the UK Government to return control of the Chagos Islands shows that the colonial mentality is still alive and strong in the minds of UK politicians.
The UK is by no means unique among the western powers in having a colonial past. The fact that at one stage the British Empire covered almost a quarter of the globe was not because the other European powers were not interested in colonizing other countries. All the major European countries were in a constant race and battle to calve up the world between them; plundering those countries resources and peoples in the process.
What does differentiate the UK from those other countries, however, is that the UK still continues to think that colonial rule is still the acceptable norm. Whilst other countries have moved past the mindset that they can retain control of other countries against the will of the populations of the countries, the UK continues to think that the rules do not apply to it, refusing to relinquish control of the remnants of its empire, even when instructed to do so by the international community. Faced with the UN nations telling it that it needed to give up control of the Chagos Islands its answer was:
The UK has no doubt as to our sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which has been under continuous British sovereignty since 1814,”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50511847
Their answer shows no sign of remorse or compromise. Basically its ‘everyone else is wrong, the Chagos Islands are ours and have been for a very long time and we are never giving them back. As for what will happen next, I don’t think there is enough international support for any major actions to be taken against the UK in the form of sanctions; on the other hand the international community is not going to let the matter slide. I would suspect that the UK will see its self shunned and sidelined at various levels, gradually eroding the UK’s influence and power in the international community to a stage that it feels that it has no choice to follow the request of the UN.
Of course in a couple of weeks we may well have Jeremy Corbyn as PM, who has promised that he would return the Islands
Asked by reporters on the campaign trail in Stoke-on-Trent whether he would accept the international court ruling on sovereignty, Corbyn said: “Yes, absolutely. I’ve been involved in the Chagos campaign for a very long time. “What happened to the Chagos islanders was utterly disgraceful. [They were] forcibly removed from their own islands, unfortunately, by this country. The right of return to those islands is absolutely important as a symbol of the way in which we wish to behave in international law. So yes, we will carry that out.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/22/uk-set-to-defy-un-deadline-to-return-chagos-islands
Whilst the fact that Corbyn would hand back the Islands without question is to be applauded, it does ask the question ‘Why is Scotland any different?’ There is a mandate for Scotland to hold a second referendum just as there is a mandate for the UK to give up control of the Chagos Islands, so why will he only respect one and not the other? To do so reeks of gross hypocrisy. This double standard when it comes to the question of the right for Scotland to choose its own path should it wish to is one of the major reasons that voters in Scotland are turning their back on Labour in their droves.
The Grumpy Scot 