DOOCY: On Prince Andrew, do you think American associates of Jeffrey Epstein will wind up in handcuffs too?
TRUMP: I'm the expert in a way because I've been totally exonerated. That's very nice. I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it's a shame. I did nothing.
It's fucking bizarre to me that we loose our shit over Starmer being a bit crap, and half the time ignore the fact that the president of the US is quite likely a child rapist and/or a Russian asset.
Well they fought their way out of the British Empire so it's kinda on them now.
Now this would be exciting if it is true, albeit extremely low level stuff.
EXCLUSIVE: Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations.
DOOCY: On Prince Andrew, do you think American associates of Jeffrey Epstein will wind up in handcuffs too?
TRUMP: I'm the expert in a way because I've been totally exonerated. That's very nice. I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it's a shame. I did nothing.
It's fucking bizarre to me that we loose our shit over Starmer being a bit crap, and half the time ignore the fact that the president of the US is quite likely a child rapist and/or a Russian asset.
Well they fought their way out of the British Empire so it's kinda on them now.
Churches apparently which clearly have been short changed in this settlement
Well, I presume there has been some kind of risk analysis undertaken and sites with greater risks are probably prioritised - without seeing the analysis and the funding formula can we say they have been 'short changed' rather than perhaps that the data thankfully does not show a need?
DOOCY: On Prince Andrew, do you think American associates of Jeffrey Epstein will wind up in handcuffs too?
TRUMP: I'm the expert in a way because I've been totally exonerated. That's very nice. I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it's a shame. I did nothing.
It's fucking bizarre to me that we loose our shit over Starmer being a bit crap, and half the time ignore the fact that the president of the US is quite likely a child rapist and/or a Russian asset.
Well they fought their way out of the British Empire so it's kinda on them now.
Churches apparently which clearly have been short changed in this settlement
Well, I presume there has been some kind of risk analysis undertaken and sites with greater risks are probably prioritised - without seeing the analysis and the funding formula can we say they have been 'short changed' rather than perhaps that the data thankfully does not show a need?
Of course there is a need, there are churches across the country which could do with funds to help get roofs repaired etc. Many dating from the Medieval period, Mosques in the UK are only 20th century and 21st century
DOOCY: On Prince Andrew, do you think American associates of Jeffrey Epstein will wind up in handcuffs too?
TRUMP: I'm the expert in a way because I've been totally exonerated. That's very nice. I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it's a shame. I did nothing.
It's fucking bizarre to me that we loose our shit over Starmer being a bit crap, and half the time ignore the fact that the president of the US is quite likely a child rapist and/or a Russian asset.
Well they fought their way out of the British Empire so it's kinda on them now.
Churches apparently which clearly have been short changed in this settlement
Well, I presume there has been some kind of risk analysis undertaken and sites with greater risks are probably prioritised - without seeing the analysis and the funding formula can we say they have been 'short changed' rather than perhaps that the data thankfully does not show a need?
Of course there is a need, there are churches across the country which could do with funds to help get roofs repaired etc. Many dating from the Medieval period, Mosques in the UK are only 20th century and 21st century
I guess I am a little naiive about how good a repair many local churches are in. I suppose local to me the ones that are not stopped being churches long ago, so only the ones in good repair are left.
But funding for the other type of 'protection' is another matter.
I think that, even now, people underestimate how much Trump is motivated by simple corruption.
It's overlooked so often as a motivating force when people try to anticipate what he will do next, but it appears to be way more important to him than any ideology, or geological strategy.
It's a kleptocratic cult dedicated to keeping it's members out of jail as long as they remain loyal. Basically a mafia government.
We're long past the point where we should be having nowt to do with them.
Europe's median reaction can be summed up as willing themselves to wake up from a nightmare.
Not happening folks. Deal with the awful reality.
46% of Irish corporation tax receipts are from three US companies (Apple, Microsoft and Eli Lilly). That's very vulnerable to the whim of a guy in the White House who would love a share of those billions.
Most of the US is in a state of denial. Decades of propaganda about the superiority of their Constitution and shining city on the hill bollocks prevents them from recognising and naming what is in plain sight.
About 40% believe that these are the necessary means that are justified by the desired end. Britain is heading the same way. A lot of the rhetoric about the blob and the civil service is to soften people up to accept similar abuses of power in Britain in the future.
Now this would be exciting if it is true, albeit extremely low level stuff.
EXCLUSIVE: Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations.
But top-down interference is built into Reform's structure. One man, one vote, and that man is Nigel. Flip knows how this is meant to scale to a party with a couple of hundred MPs.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
No. That’s a “sphere of influence” not bowl of convenience.
Churches apparently which clearly have been short changed in this settlement
Well, I presume there has been some kind of risk analysis undertaken and sites with greater risks are probably prioritised - without seeing the analysis and the funding formula can we say they have been 'short changed' rather than perhaps that the data thankfully does not show a need?
Of course there is a need, there are churches across the country which could do with funds to help get roofs repaired etc. Many dating from the Medieval period, Mosques in the UK are only 20th century and 21st century
The funding is presumably for security, not for roof repairs.
Local reporter for Teeside Live at the Redcar count suggests he's hearing it's expected to be a very big LD win
Interesting parliamentary history in recent times around Redcar. Labour since creation in the 70s until a massive swing to the LDs for them to win in 2010 (Steelworks issue IIRC), then a Labour Gain in 2015, Tory Gain in 2019, then Labour Gain (on a retread) in 2024.
Now this would be exciting if it is true, albeit extremely low level stuff.
EXCLUSIVE: Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations.
But top-down interference is built into Reform's structure. One man, one vote, and that man is Nigel. Flip knows how this is meant to scale to a party with a couple of hundred MPs.
It couldn't - but that would be a problem for another day. Many a leader will happily trade problems tomorrow for a win today.
Local reporter for Teeside Live at the Redcar count suggests he's hearing it's expected to be a very big LD win
Interesting parliamentary history in recent times around Redcar. Labour since creation in the 70s until a massive swing to the LDs for them to win in 2010 (Steelworks issue IIRC), then a Labour Gain in 2015, Tory Gain in 2019, then Labour Gain (on a retread) in 2024.
I think that, even now, people underestimate how much Trump is motivated by simple corruption.
It's overlooked so often as a motivating force when people try to anticipate what he will do next, but it appears to be way more important to him than any ideology, or geological strategy.
It's a kleptocratic cult dedicated to keeping it's members out of jail as long as they remain loyal. Basically a mafia government.
We're long past the point where we should be having nowt to do with them.
Europe's median reaction can be summed up as willing themselves to wake up from a nightmare.
Not happening folks. Deal with the awful reality.
46% of Irish corporation tax receipts are from three US companies (Apple, Microsoft and Eli Lilly). That's very vulnerable to the whim of a guy in the White House who would love a share of those billions.
Most of the US is in a state of denial. Decades of propaganda about the superiority of their Constitution and shining city on the hill bollocks prevents them from recognising and naming what is in plain sight.
Even with any resistance beaten out of the GOP, and various court cases around the country, the Congressional and other response to deliberate escalation of executive overreach for example has seemed extremely supine. Maybe it's because they know the SC will uphold most things - handing down some occasional defeats to demonstrate 'independence'.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
Local reporter for Teeside Live at the Redcar count suggests he's hearing it's expected to be a very big LD win
Interesting parliamentary history in recent times around Redcar. Labour since creation in the 70s until a massive swing to the LDs for them to win in 2010 (Steelworks issue IIRC), then a Labour Gain in 2015, Tory Gain in 2019, then Labour Gain (on a retread) in 2024.
Redcar Yellowcar Bluecar
And back to Redcar again I guess.
It's an interesting one for the LDs, as even though the 2010 win was somewhat of a one off they had still had a sizable vote before then, but like some other cases they disappeared to below deposit level only 9 years after getting 45%.
It won't happen, as probably neither will hold their desposit, but it would be very funny for a massive polling failure and the Gorton vote is so even split that Tories or LDs snuck through for a win - it would be so counter to the expected narratives that everyone would be speechless.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
It won't happen, as probably neither will hold their desposit, but it would be very funny for a massive polling failure and the Gorton vote is so even split that Tories or LDs snuck through for a win - it would be so counter to the expected narratives that everyone would be speechless.
I think a surprise Advance UK win is more likely than a Con or LD win!
Now this would be exciting if it is true, albeit extremely low level stuff.
EXCLUSIVE: Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations.
But top-down interference is built into Reform's structure. One man, one vote, and that man is Nigel. Flip knows how this is meant to scale to a party with a couple of hundred MPs.
Farage is clearly looking to run a Presidential campaign and government. British politics has trended strongly in that direction over decades, so he's kinda pushing at an open door in my view.
Boris Johnson ran his government on a, "my (Cummings) way, or the highway," basis and that worked fine for him until his personal failings finally accumulated too far. Remember Sajid Javid was sacked as Chancellor for refusing to accept Cummings appointing his advisors?
Reform MPs will know that they owe their place in Parliament to Farage and will have been selected largely on the basis of their willingness to follow orders. Look at how Trump has cowed the GOP in Congress.
Look even at the way that Starmer has managed his backbenches. He's been very aggressive in removing the whip from backbenchers that express dissent. This really should be receiving more attention and criticism in my view, as it's yet another step to undermining the independence of MPs from the executive and enforcing party discipline over MPs responding to the concerns of their constituents.
I'm not sure that this is all going to fall apart on Farage as much as people expect.
It won't happen, as probably neither will hold their desposit, but it would be very funny for a massive polling failure and the Gorton vote is so even split that Tories or LDs snuck through for a win - it would be so counter to the expected narratives that everyone would be speechless.
I think a surprise Advance UK win is more likely than a Con or LD win!
I think that, even now, people underestimate how much Trump is motivated by simple corruption.
It's overlooked so often as a motivating force when people try to anticipate what he will do next, but it appears to be way more important to him than any ideology, or geological strategy.
It's a kleptocratic cult dedicated to keeping it's members out of jail as long as they remain loyal. Basically a mafia government.
We're long past the point where we should be having nowt to do with them.
Europe's median reaction can be summed up as willing themselves to wake up from a nightmare.
Not happening folks. Deal with the awful reality.
46% of Irish corporation tax receipts are from three US companies (Apple, Microsoft and Eli Lilly). That's very vulnerable to the whim of a guy in the White House who would love a share of those billions.
Most of the US is in a state of denial. Decades of propaganda about the superiority of their Constitution and shining city on the hill bollocks prevents them from recognising and naming what is in plain sight.
So Trump is unilaterally committing $10B of US tax payer money...
To an offshore entity that he controls and is the lifelong chairman of.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Now this would be exciting if it is true, albeit extremely low level stuff.
EXCLUSIVE: Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations.
But top-down interference is built into Reform's structure. One man, one vote, and that man is Nigel. Flip knows how this is meant to scale to a party with a couple of hundred MPs.
Farage is clearly looking to run a Presidential campaign and government. British politics has trended strongly in that direction over decades, so he's kinda pushing at an open door in my view.
Boris Johnson ran his government on a, "my (Cummings) way, or the highway," basis and that worked fine for him until his personal failings finally accumulated too far. Remember Sajid Javid was sacked as Chancellor for refusing to accept Cummings appointing his advisors? Reform MPs will know that they owe their place in Parliament to Farage and will have been selected largely on the basis of their willingness to follow orders. Look at how Trump has cowed the GOP in Congress.
Look even at the way that Starmer has managed his backbenches. He's been very aggressive in removing the whip from backbenchers that express dissent. This really should be receiving more attention and criticism in my view, as it's yet another step to undermining the independence of MPs from the executive and enforcing party discipline over MPs responding to the concerns of their constituents.
I'm not sure that this is all going to fall apart on Farage as much as people expect.
Except a lot Tory MPs owed their place in Parliament to Boris, and many Labour MPs to Starmer. People can quibble about how much they owed those places, especially when Labour got a relatively low percentage, but the Leaders still delivered those big wins, and it didn't stop the MPs from getting rowdy on all sorts of issues.
Your example of Starmer trying to manage his backbenchers aggressively kind of enforces that point - the MPs are still independent minded and his response has been extreme and probably counter productive to his long term prospects.
I don't think in the euphoria of a Reform win its MPs would turn on Farage quickly. They'd even accept some of the compromises of government with equanimity and that certain old ways of doing things have to remain.
But some of them at least will be true believers in the rhetoric in a way that Farage, a more polished political operator, is not. You can see this with some Reform councils - they won't fall apart as much as some people think because professionals keep the plates spinning, but a proportion of the inexperienced Reform councillors fall out as they are true believers who don't accept compromises, or are the sort who do not play well with others.
I think that, even now, people underestimate how much Trump is motivated by simple corruption.
It's overlooked so often as a motivating force when people try to anticipate what he will do next, but it appears to be way more important to him than any ideology, or geological strategy.
It's a kleptocratic cult dedicated to keeping it's members out of jail as long as they remain loyal. Basically a mafia government.
We're long past the point where we should be having nowt to do with them.
Europe's median reaction can be summed up as willing themselves to wake up from a nightmare.
Not happening folks. Deal with the awful reality.
46% of Irish corporation tax receipts are from three US companies (Apple, Microsoft and Eli Lilly). That's very vulnerable to the whim of a guy in the White House who would love a share of those billions.
Most of the US is in a state of denial. Decades of propaganda about the superiority of their Constitution and shining city on the hill bollocks prevents them from recognising and naming what is in plain sight.
So Trump is unilaterally committing $10B of US tax payer money...
To an offshore entity that he controls and is the lifelong chairman of.
It won't happen, as probably neither will hold their desposit, but it would be very funny for a massive polling failure and the Gorton vote is so even split that Tories or LDs snuck through for a win - it would be so counter to the expected narratives that everyone would be speechless.
Suppose we have a surprise four-way vote split, instead of three-way, and there's 10% between all the other candidates, then you might see a winner on 23%.
Even on a very low turnout either Tories or Lib Dems would have to add absolute numbers of voters to their 2024 tally. It would be gobsmacking alright.
I suppose the Lib Dem campaigning is concentrating on building up their relationship with voters in the wards where they already have some strength (for future local elections), and I'm not sure what the Tories are hoping to achieve.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
I was there in 95 too. Spent my first night on the floor of the waiting room in Delhi station as my train was 15 hours late.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
I wasn't sure if it was uncharitable to give you a like for that, but I did so anyway.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
Funny how the Greens just manage to be in second place . I’m very dubious of these returns .
No doubt sometimes it works out, but it is not reliable. I've known parties lose seats where their canvass returns showed no concern at all, or they only started to realise they might lose (or win!) the day before.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
Funny how the Greens just manage to be in second place . I’m very dubious of these returns .
I know that this is how by-election campaigns are fought, particularly in such a three horse race with tactical voting arguments. And the Greens are fighting for their first ever Westminster by-election victory.
But it's depressing to see them stoop to such chicanery.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
Yes, the Mumbai slums in 1995 on the airport rd were the worst place that I have ever passed through. A combined stench od salt marsh, sewage and diesel fumes.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Here's the view of the dining hall at the Golden Temple, where Mrs Foxy and I had our lunch. Very generous bunch the Sikhs; two curries, rice, roti and pudding all at no charge, with seconds if wanted. 60 000 served every day.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
Funny how the Greens just manage to be in second place . I’m very dubious of these returns .
No doubt sometimes it works out, but it is not reliable. I've known parties lose seats where their canvass returns showed no concern at all, or they only started to realise they might lose (or win!) the day before.
I remember the so called amazing canvass returns for Yes in the Scottish Indy Ref !
How many refused were in the sample or don’t knows . What was the breakdown in the different parts of the constituency which are likely to vote different ways ? Without that info it’s not really telling us much . I think the Greens will get over the line helped by the large Muslim vote and the likely higher turnout in Gorton.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
Yes, the Mumbai slums in 1995 on the airport rd were the worst place that I have ever passed through. A combined stench od salt marsh, sewage and diesel fumes.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Here's the view of the dining hall at the Golden Temple, where Mrs Foxy and I had our lunch. Very generous bunch the Sikhs; two curries, rice, roti and pudding all at no charge, with seconds if wanted. 60 000 served every day.
Went there in 95 too. You could still see the bullet holes from the siege. It had only recently been made safe and we were the only foreign tourists in town. Got treated like royalty.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
Yes, the Mumbai slums in 1995 on the airport rd were the worst place that I have ever passed through. A combined stench od salt marsh, sewage and diesel fumes.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
On the other other hand. If Labour are that close telling Green canvassers then the real number is a lot higher also. Been saying all along that laying the Greens is value. Particularly as their demographic don't vote.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
Yes, the Mumbai slums in 1995 on the airport rd were the worst place that I have ever passed through. A combined stench od salt marsh, sewage and diesel fumes.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Here's the view of the dining hall at the Golden Temple, where Mrs Foxy and I had our lunch. Very generous bunch the Sikhs; two curries, rice, roti and pudding all at no charge, with seconds if wanted. 60 000 served every day.
Went there in 95 too. You could still see the bullet holes from the siege. It had only recently been made safe and we were the only foreign tourists in town. Got treated like royalty.
Still not many white tourists as a bit away from the main tourist trail. Mrs Foxy has quite an inclination to Sikhism so wanted to visit the Golden Temple. The whole place is run by volunteers. Of all the religious sites that I have seen it is the most impressive.
A Sikh chap there edged up to me there to ask where we were from, and he was pleased to meet a fellow midlander, as he was from Brum. He gave us quite a tour. I have a lot of time for the Sikhs myself, and got a much clearer idea of how it all works.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
Yes, the Mumbai slums in 1995 on the airport rd were the worst place that I have ever passed through. A combined stench od salt marsh, sewage and diesel fumes.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Sure, still some way to go, but it is a country that is developing at great speed (and a lot of smog). Roads and apartments being built everywhere.
India is so extreme that everywhere afterwards seems a bit dull. Extreme noise, extreme tranquility, extreme colour, extreme poverty, extreme materialism, extreme asceticism.
I want to see more, and am quite tempted by Assam, Kerala or Gujerat for the next trip there.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
Yes, the Mumbai slums in 1995 on the airport rd were the worst place that I have ever passed through. A combined stench od salt marsh, sewage and diesel fumes.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Here's the view of the dining hall at the Golden Temple, where Mrs Foxy and I had our lunch. Very generous bunch the Sikhs; two curries, rice, roti and pudding all at no charge, with seconds if wanted. 60 000 served every day.
Went there in 95 too. You could still see the bullet holes from the siege. It had only recently been made safe and we were the only foreign tourists in town. Got treated like royalty.
Still not many white tourists as a bit away from the main tourist trail. Mrs Foxy has quite an inclination to Sikhism so wanted to visit the Golden Temple. The whole place is run by volunteers. Of all the religious sites that I have seen it is the most impressive.
A Sikh chap there edged up to me there to ask where we were from, and he was pleased to meet a fellow midlander, as he was from Brum. He gave us quite a tour. I have a lot of time for the Sikhs myself, and got a much clearer idea of how it all works.
Most impressive religious site yes. Stunningly beautiful. Sikhs seem to combine the better bits of Hinduism and Islam. And ditch the bonkers bits. So not appreciated by either.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
Yes, the Mumbai slums in 1995 on the airport rd were the worst place that I have ever passed through. A combined stench od salt marsh, sewage and diesel fumes.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Here's the view of the dining hall at the Golden Temple, where Mrs Foxy and I had our lunch. Very generous bunch the Sikhs; two curries, rice, roti and pudding all at no charge, with seconds if wanted. 60 000 served every day.
Went there in 95 too. You could still see the bullet holes from the siege. It had only recently been made safe and we were the only foreign tourists in town. Got treated like royalty.
Still not many white tourists as a bit away from the main tourist trail. Mrs Foxy has quite an inclination to Sikhism so wanted to visit the Golden Temple. The whole place is run by volunteers. Of all the religious sites that I have seen it is the most impressive.
A Sikh chap there edged up to me there to ask where we were from, and he was pleased to meet a fellow midlander, as he was from Brum. He gave us quite a tour. I have a lot of time for the Sikhs myself, and got a much clearer idea of how it all works.
Most impressive religious site yes. Stunningly beautiful. Sikhs seem to combine the better bits of Hinduism and Islam. And ditch the bonkers bits. So not appreciated by either.
Wikipedia states there's only about 25-30 million Sikhs worldwide, which blows my mind as I thought it was a much more prevalent faith, or at least that even as a minority in India that would add up to way more. Possibly it's because wiki also claims the UK has the third highest number of Sikhs worldwide, so it seems more common to me.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
Yes, the Mumbai slums in 1995 on the airport rd were the worst place that I have ever passed through. A combined stench od salt marsh, sewage and diesel fumes.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Sure, still some way to go, but it is a country that is developing at great speed (and a lot of smog). Roads and apartments being built everywhere.
India is so extreme that everywhere afterwards seems a bit dull. Extreme noise, extreme tranquility, extreme colour, extreme poverty, extreme materialism, extreme asceticism.
I want to see more, and am quite tempted by Assam, Kerala or Gujerat for the next trip there.
Sensory overload for sure. Have you been to Himachal or Rajasthan? They are like completely different countries in some ways.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
On the other other hand. If Labour are that close telling Green canvassers then the real number is a lot higher also. Been saying all along that laying the Greens is value. Particularly as their demographic don't vote.
The supposed data is just too perfect for telling the story the Greens want to tell - we're nearly there, but your tactical vote for the Greens is still needed to see off Reform.
Even if it's based on real data I'd bet that it's been tortured in some way to get those precise figures. Some subset in time and space.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
Yes, the Mumbai slums in 1995 on the airport rd were the worst place that I have ever passed through. A combined stench od salt marsh, sewage and diesel fumes.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Sure, still some way to go, but it is a country that is developing at great speed (and a lot of smog). Roads and apartments being built everywhere.
India is so extreme that everywhere afterwards seems a bit dull. Extreme noise, extreme tranquility, extreme colour, extreme poverty, extreme materialism, extreme asceticism.
I want to see more, and am quite tempted by Assam, Kerala or Gujerat for the next trip there.
Sensory overload for sure. Have you been to Himachal or Rajasthan? They are like completely different countries in some ways.
Yes, we went to Mcleod Ganj, Shimla and Rishikesh too. All interesting in different ways. It was a bit of a religiously inspired tour.
It’s very very risky from Starmer. Hard to believe he said no.
It is a very big moment in UK US special relationship I think. Does anyone have any example of such a request turned down before? I think for Vietnam US never asked Labour government to use an RAF base at any point?
If Kemi says she would have given a different answer, straight away a huge and explosive differential between Conservative and Labour. Because, if any US plane goes down, with U’S service lives lost, anywhere in the battle space, Trump will blame the British Labour government for their deaths.
Yes - I have such an example.
The Conservative Government in 2012 rebuffed any attempt to use Diego-Garcia for a pre-emptive attack on Iran in advance, because they had official legal advice that could be against international law.
The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories. .. The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans." .. "I think the US has been surprised that ministers have been reluctant to provide assurances about this kind of upfront assistance," said one source. "They'd expect resistance from senior Liberal Democrats, but it's Tories as well. That has come as a bit of a surprise." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/25/uk-reject-us-request-bases-iran
It will be fun if SKS finds that, given that the Shadow Def Sec is jumping up and down demanding the Govt do the opposite.
From The Times. “Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases {Times includes Diego Garcia} can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the government.
I suspect The Times journalism is wrong, and no such agreement applies to Diego Garcia. It’s not an RAF base, it’s not even a joint base, it’s a US base. It seems very odd to me, based on the whole history of UK involvement with the US in Chagos, where UK have been so subservient, the US would allow such a clause on use of their own base.
As for 2012 and all that, the UK government would try to bundle DG in with the others to aid their pushback - but they were likely wrong. Technically UK island, but not UK base.
Seems very in keeping with the whole arrangement if it was technically a UK base even if in every way that matters it was not. Maintaining such legal ties long beyond practical reality is pretty common in our way of working.
I don’t think it’s ever in any technicality been a UK base, we are just Landlord, with a very token presence in the base. UK is not really a user of the base, as online pages saying “joint UK US base” could fool you into thinking.
It’s starts with the US wanting this base in Indian Ocean - it does both aircraft and submarines - and UK wasn’t the first country they approached with their pitch, that was France. Key part of the pitch for hosting the US base was a knockdown deal on US nuclear weaponry. The French would have to explain for themselves why they said no - maybe something about them does such things for themselves not joint ventures, they didn’t want such a degree of trans Atlantic special relationship they could get tied into, and lose some degree of freedom. Maybe it’s true De Gaulle was just plain unstable. But UK governments in 1960’s, both Conservative and Labour, saw the pitch from the US as a bargain. They embraced it.
I don’t believe there was any predecessor the base was built on, not an RAF airfield or anything. It’s also interesting, as they approached France first, US may have had a particular site already in mind.
I don't think 'technically' means what you think it does in this context - all you say could be true for all I know, and would not prevent it in a technical sense still being a UK base, even if it was basically a polite fiction.
I think technically UK would have to be users of the base ourselves, for it technically to be a UK or even joint base. If all we, MOD, do there is act as the base Security contractor - mop up the Sri Lankan fishing junks straying too close, and confiscating the Chinese listening equipment from them, then back to base and top up the sun tans - like Death in Paradise, only with no deaths just Piña Coladas - it’s technically not the UK base the UK politicians and media are trying to fool us into believing it is, this evening. Is it?
We currently get “something” from it so it’s a benefit to the UK. Now that might be at the whims of the US but it’s a benefit.
The current plan would be like us giving Gibraltar to Morocco because in a different time they had administration over it then paying Morocco for the privilege of letting France have a military base there. It’s absolutely nuts.
I don’t like it either. But that’s what the Indian and US governments cooked up for us to sign up to.
The actual pressure on us came from India, the rising super power in the region. Not UN. India said Mauritius. So it is.
Mauritius sees itself being a sort of African East Coast Singapore, accordingly has a bit of trade deal with China, but military and security deals with India.
When Patel and Reform and US Senators say “China’s friend Mauritius” and don’t mention India, never mention India, they are just utterly embarrassing themselves really. Stretching fantasy they want to believe over it all, not sticking to the facts - in some sort of echo chamber where they don’t even want to listen and accept the facts.
But that can only last for so long now 🙂
Citations please for this "India" business?
Okay. 🙂
if Mauritius is aligned with any country, that country is India, from which the majority of Mauritius’ population trace their ancestry! a product of the British Empire’s practice of importing indentured labourers from India to ensure its sugar plantations continued to function after its abolition of slavery. And also strong is the modern connection between Mauritius and India. From 2013 to 2021, some $231 million of foreign direct investment came to India from Mauritius, with $151 million going the other way. These same investment flows for China are $89.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively. In total, 3.8 per cent of Mauritius’ trade is with China, compared to 12.2 per cent with India. India has constructed a military facility on the Mauritian island of Agaléga, which recent reports state is now ready to receive naval and air assets.
We can all read something different in citations, but I read enough that wanting to be Singapore of East Coast Africa, Mauritius has trade arrangements with China - as we do too - but its defence and security arrangements are with India, its spiritual heritage lies with India, who indeed pushed for Mauritius to take Chagos ownership. So it is a little more nuanced than we have been led to believe, isn’t it. Yes openly embracing China for trade while maintaining close-knit security collaboration with the United States and India. For example, the 99 year lease idea was a Mauritius pitch, not to the UK, but to the US, who accepted the idea perhaps before UK had even heard of it.
Any further questions? 🙂
Well yes, from me, does Badenoch and Patel know all this, but happy to spin it away from the factual need for change in a changing Indian Ocean? Or do they not actually understand all this?
Whilst your wordy weirdness is often questionable I agree with you that India has a lot more to do with this than China. There will be elements of this between them in tandem as it’s in both their interests to try and remove the US from there but India has infinitely more of a relationship so with Mauritius and it’s very much their “sphere of influence”.
Pah! The Indians can't even do public toilets properly
I dunno. Toileting arrangements in parts of India seem to be a lot more public than in Britain.
I remember my first time in Delhi going past the street side open urinals wondering why they didn’t get that they were for a piss not a dirty great shit. And then riding past a paddy field and watching a woman hitching up her skirts and shitting in the rice. Thank god you wash and boil it.
It was pretty much like this when I was in India in 1995, but when I was there in 2025 it was a different place indeed. Not as clean as Vietnam etc, but not bad at all.
Good to hear. I will never ever forget being in the car from the airport to the hotel and crying my eyes out seeing the children under raggedy blankets along the road. It made me so upset and so very angry. And I’m a cynical horrid shit.
Yes, the Mumbai slums in 1995 on the airport rd were the worst place that I have ever passed through. A combined stench od salt marsh, sewage and diesel fumes.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Here's the view of the dining hall at the Golden Temple, where Mrs Foxy and I had our lunch. Very generous bunch the Sikhs; two curries, rice, roti and pudding all at no charge, with seconds if wanted. 60 000 served every day.
Went there in 95 too. You could still see the bullet holes from the siege. It had only recently been made safe and we were the only foreign tourists in town. Got treated like royalty.
Still not many white tourists as a bit away from the main tourist trail. Mrs Foxy has quite an inclination to Sikhism so wanted to visit the Golden Temple. The whole place is run by volunteers. Of all the religious sites that I have seen it is the most impressive.
A Sikh chap there edged up to me there to ask where we were from, and he was pleased to meet a fellow midlander, as he was from Brum. He gave us quite a tour. I have a lot of time for the Sikhs myself, and got a much clearer idea of how it all works.
Most impressive religious site yes. Stunningly beautiful. Sikhs seem to combine the better bits of Hinduism and Islam. And ditch the bonkers bits. So not appreciated by either.
Wikipedia states there's only about 25-30 million Sikhs worldwide, which blows my mind as I thought it was a much more prevalent faith, or at least that even as a minority in India that would add up to way more. Possibly it's because wiki also claims the UK has the third highest number of Sikhs worldwide, so it seems more common to me.
Sikhs are noted for being great soldiers. So stand out in Imperial memory. And very very sporty. So they are overrepresented in Indian teams. So that combined with there being quite a lot here gives us perhaps a slanted view of their numbers. You don't really see many in India beyond the Punjab.
Stoneygate still to come in the byelection. Leicester politics is bonkers, so the Conservative candidate is a former Labour Councillor and Lord Mayor, the Greens are putting in a strong campaign, Labour are trying for a hold, but my hunch is that the Ind (Noor) will win based on window posters. Anything could happen.
Stoneygate is the east side of the London rd, so goes from the railway station to the leafiest University bits of Leicester.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
On the other other hand. If Labour are that close telling Green canvassers then the real number is a lot higher also. Been saying all along that laying the Greens is value. Particularly as their demographic don't vote.
The supposed data is just too perfect for telling the story the Greens want to tell - we're nearly there, but your tactical vote for the Greens is still needed to see off Reform.
Even if it's based on real data I'd bet that it's been tortured in some way to get those precise figures. Some subset in time and space.
I hate this sort of bollocks.
It's very cynical, even grubby, based on the idea that people feel numbers make things more trustworthy, even if they claim otherwise.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
On the other other hand. If Labour are that close telling Green canvassers then the real number is a lot higher also. Been saying all along that laying the Greens is value. Particularly as their demographic don't vote.
The supposed data is just too perfect for telling the story the Greens want to tell - we're nearly there, but your tactical vote for the Greens is still needed to see off Reform.
Even if it's based on real data I'd bet that it's been tortured in some way to get those precise figures. Some subset in time and space.
I hate this sort of bollocks.
It's very cynical, even grubby, based on the idea that people feel numbers make things more trustworthy, even if they claim otherwise.
It trains politicians in lying for expediency as a means to get elected. Done once it becomes easier to do again. And again.
Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot · 1h If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
On the other other hand. If Labour are that close telling Green canvassers then the real number is a lot higher also. Been saying all along that laying the Greens is value. Particularly as their demographic don't vote.
The supposed data is just too perfect for telling the story the Greens want to tell - we're nearly there, but your tactical vote for the Greens is still needed to see off Reform.
Even if it's based on real data I'd bet that it's been tortured in some way to get those precise figures. Some subset in time and space.
I hate this sort of bollocks.
Reform do look a bit long at 4.6, so I have gone green on them too, so all green across the three main contenders. On Green at 6.5, Lab on 10 and now Ref on 4.6 all at different stages of the contest.
I think that, even now, people underestimate how much Trump is motivated by simple corruption.
It's overlooked so often as a motivating force when people try to anticipate what he will do next, but it appears to be way more important to him than any ideology, or geological strategy.
It's a kleptocratic cult dedicated to keeping it's members out of jail as long as they remain loyal. Basically a mafia government.
We're long past the point where we should be having nowt to do with them.
Europe's median reaction can be summed up as willing themselves to wake up from a nightmare.
Not happening folks. Deal with the awful reality.
46% of Irish corporation tax receipts are from three US companies (Apple, Microsoft and Eli Lilly). That's very vulnerable to the whim of a guy in the White House who would love a share of those billions.
Most of the US is in a state of denial. Decades of propaganda about the superiority of their Constitution and shining city on the hill bollocks prevents them from recognising and naming what is in plain sight.
So Trump is unilaterally committing $10B of US tax payer money...
To an offshore entity that he controls and is the lifelong chairman of.
If, and if is the operative word, ANW gets a custodial sentence then what in God's name do authorities do.
He'd have to be held in high security solidarity confinement for his own safety.
Whatever the charge, to the prison population he'd be seen as a nonce or peado.
Open Prison would be impossible.
There would be massive public pressure to serve his sentence but massive political outrage if any problems befell him.
Not a welcome problem for any Home Secretary or Government.
There are a lot of child sex offenders in prison. It's something the prison service has quite a bit of experience in dealing with, and also in dealing with older prisoners for those crimes, because there have been a lot of historical cases.
I don't think it's something they wouldn't be able to handle.
I think that, even now, people underestimate how much Trump is motivated by simple corruption.
It's overlooked so often as a motivating force when people try to anticipate what he will do next, but it appears to be way more important to him than any ideology, or geological strategy.
It's a kleptocratic cult dedicated to keeping it's members out of jail as long as they remain loyal. Basically a mafia government.
We're long past the point where we should be having nowt to do with them.
Europe's median reaction can be summed up as willing themselves to wake up from a nightmare.
Not happening folks. Deal with the awful reality.
46% of Irish corporation tax receipts are from three US companies (Apple, Microsoft and Eli Lilly). That's very vulnerable to the whim of a guy in the White House who would love a share of those billions.
Most of the US is in a state of denial. Decades of propaganda about the superiority of their Constitution and shining city on the hill bollocks prevents them from recognising and naming what is in plain sight.
So Trump is unilaterally committing $10B of US tax payer money...
To an offshore entity that he controls and is the lifelong chairman of.
And it’s not a crime because it’s an official act as president. My goodness the Supreme Court are idiots
That might have been covered anyway, maybe, but they blew it open even wider than that. Makes sense given at least one of the justices is openly, proudly corrupt, but you'd hope the others on his side might have an issue with it.
I think that, even now, people underestimate how much Trump is motivated by simple corruption.
It's overlooked so often as a motivating force when people try to anticipate what he will do next, but it appears to be way more important to him than any ideology, or geological strategy.
It's a kleptocratic cult dedicated to keeping it's members out of jail as long as they remain loyal. Basically a mafia government.
We're long past the point where we should be having nowt to do with them.
Europe's median reaction can be summed up as willing themselves to wake up from a nightmare.
Not happening folks. Deal with the awful reality.
46% of Irish corporation tax receipts are from three US companies (Apple, Microsoft and Eli Lilly). That's very vulnerable to the whim of a guy in the White House who would love a share of those billions.
Most of the US is in a state of denial. Decades of propaganda about the superiority of their Constitution and shining city on the hill bollocks prevents them from recognising and naming what is in plain sight.
So Trump is unilaterally committing $10B of US tax payer money...
To an offshore entity that he controls and is the lifelong chairman of.
I think that, even now, people underestimate how much Trump is motivated by simple corruption.
It's overlooked so often as a motivating force when people try to anticipate what he will do next, but it appears to be way more important to him than any ideology, or geological strategy.
It's a kleptocratic cult dedicated to keeping it's members out of jail as long as they remain loyal. Basically a mafia government.
We're long past the point where we should be having nowt to do with them.
Europe's median reaction can be summed up as willing themselves to wake up from a nightmare.
Not happening folks. Deal with the awful reality.
46% of Irish corporation tax receipts are from three US companies (Apple, Microsoft and Eli Lilly). That's very vulnerable to the whim of a guy in the White House who would love a share of those billions.
Most of the US is in a state of denial. Decades of propaganda about the superiority of their Constitution and shining city on the hill bollocks prevents them from recognising and naming what is in plain sight.
So Trump is unilaterally committing $10B of US tax payer money...
To an offshore entity that he controls and is the lifelong chairman of.
Comments
EXCLUSIVE: Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations.
Reform UK has not yet issued an official statement on the resignations
https://nitter.poast.org/CharlieSimpsonA/status/2024583560938868863#m
NU1000 or whatever it is called???
He does look like his life is flashing before him.
"Shit. I really DID sleep with her..."
But funding for the other type of 'protection' is another matter.
https://www.facebook.com/61560523572597/posts/122206302350350785/
But top-down interference is built into Reform's structure. One man, one vote, and that man is Nigel. Flip knows how this is meant to scale to a party with a couple of hundred MPs.
You are talking about the most expensive (by miles) part of Redcar..
Jessica Elgot
@jessicaelgot
·
1h
If this data is accurate, Reform are going to walk it because if that many voters are telling Green canvassers they are voting Reform then the real number is a lot higher.
https://x.com/jessicaelgot/status/2024595543444398460
It's an interesting one for the LDs, as even though the 2010 win was somewhat of a one off they had still had a sizable vote before then, but like some other cases they disappeared to below deposit level only 9 years after getting 45%.
Apparently for xenophobia.
Boris Johnson ran his government on a, "my (Cummings) way, or the highway," basis and that worked fine for him until his personal failings finally accumulated too far. Remember Sajid Javid was sacked as Chancellor for refusing to accept Cummings appointing his advisors?
Reform MPs will know that they owe their place in Parliament to Farage and will have been selected largely on the basis of their willingness to follow orders. Look at how Trump has cowed the GOP in Congress.
Look even at the way that Starmer has managed his backbenches. He's been very aggressive in removing the whip from backbenchers that express dissent. This really should be receiving more attention and criticism in my view, as it's yet another step to undermining the independence of MPs from the executive and enforcing party discipline over MPs responding to the concerns of their constituents.
I'm not sure that this is all going to fall apart on Farage as much as people expect.
To an offshore entity that he controls and is the lifelong chairman of.
He is robbing America blind, and about 1/3rd of the country is too stupid to see it!
https://x.com/adamscochran/status/2024534374507573401
Your example of Starmer trying to manage his backbenchers aggressively kind of enforces that point - the MPs are still independent minded and his response has been extreme and probably counter productive to his long term prospects.
I don't think in the euphoria of a Reform win its MPs would turn on Farage quickly. They'd even accept some of the compromises of government with equanimity and that certain old ways of doing things have to remain.
But some of them at least will be true believers in the rhetoric in a way that Farage, a more polished political operator, is not. You can see this with some Reform councils - they won't fall apart as much as some people think because professionals keep the plates spinning, but a proportion of the inexperienced Reform councillors fall out as they are true believers who don't accept compromises, or are the sort who do not play well with others.
Even on a very low turnout either Tories or Lib Dems would have to add absolute numbers of voters to their 2024 tally. It would be gobsmacking alright.
I suppose the Lib Dem campaigning is concentrating on building up their relationship with voters in the wards where they already have some strength (for future local elections), and I'm not sure what the Tories are hoping to achieve.
Spent my first night on the floor of the waiting room in Delhi station as my train was 15 hours late.
Carole Cadwalladr
@carolecadwalla
·
48m
This may be the most British headline of all time:
‘First royal to be held since Charles 1, 1647’
https://x.com/carolecadwalla/status/2024607198781870552
===
Sun: 'Now he's sweating'
Funny how the Greens just manage to be in second place . I’m very dubious of these returns .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRzkXGi153o
🔶 LDM: 50.5% (+15.2)
🌹 LAB: 21.6% (-25.2)
➡️ RFM: 13.5% (New)
🌍 GRN: 7.4% (New)
🌳 CON: 7.0% (-10.9)
Liberal Democrat GAIN from Labour.
Changes w/ 2023.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c70kjr9wjw0t
But it's depressing to see them stoop to such chicanery.
But Delhi was fine last year. The huge rubbish tip in the city centre is now an airconditioned shopping mall etc.
Here's the view of the dining hall at the Golden Temple, where Mrs Foxy and I had our lunch. Very generous bunch the Sikhs; two curries, rice, roti and pudding all at no charge, with seconds if wanted. 60 000 served every day.
How many refused were in the sample or don’t knows . What was the breakdown in the different parts of the constituency which are likely to vote different ways ? Without that info it’s not really telling us much . I think the Greens will get over the line helped by the large Muslim vote and the likely higher turnout in Gorton.
You could still see the bullet holes from the siege.
It had only recently been made safe and we were the only foreign tourists in town. Got treated like royalty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRzkXGi153o
(published November)
Been saying all along that laying the Greens is value.
Particularly as their demographic don't vote.
A Sikh chap there edged up to me there to ask where we were from, and he was pleased to meet a fellow midlander, as he was from Brum. He gave us quite a tour. I have a lot of time for the Sikhs myself, and got a much clearer idea of how it all works.
Not winning there.
India is so extreme that everywhere afterwards seems a bit dull. Extreme noise, extreme tranquility, extreme colour, extreme poverty, extreme materialism, extreme asceticism.
I want to see more, and am quite tempted by Assam, Kerala or Gujerat for the next trip there.
Sikhs seem to combine the better bits of Hinduism and Islam.
And ditch the bonkers bits.
So not appreciated by either.
Have you been to Himachal or Rajasthan?
They are like completely different countries in some ways.
Even if it's based on real data I'd bet that it's been tortured in some way to get those precise figures. Some subset in time and space.
I hate this sort of bollocks.
Exceeded expectations would be my spin as a LibDem press officer
And very very sporty.
So they are overrepresented in Indian teams.
So that combined with there being quite a lot here gives us perhaps a slanted view of their numbers. You don't really see many in India beyond the Punjab.
Stoneygate is the east side of the London rd, so goes from the railway station to the leafiest University bits of Leicester.
He'd have to be held in high security solidarity confinement for his own safety.
Whatever the charge, to the prison population he'd be seen as a nonce or peado.
Open Prison would be impossible.
There would be massive public pressure to serve his sentence but massive political outrage if any problems befell him.
Not a welcome problem for any Home Secretary or Government.
Might as well get something from the Chagos deal.
I don't think it's something they wouldn't be able to handle.
Cheesy pun.
Donny would pardon him and make him Trade Envoy to the UK.
Or Minister for Women.
Or Supervisor of School Boards.
Or some such.
https://x.com/i/status/2024627266718744724
(That’s actually a semi serious suggestion)
https://x.com/i/status/2024623312169513419
He could be behind a 2 way mirror for visitors to file passed and see him. They would come from all over the world. It would make a Royal Mint.
Might be the logical option unless we could hire Spandau
Couldn't even find a candidate.
Labour might actually take that pierce right now