Britain is paying the “going rate as a tenant for… the best defensive real estate in the whole Indian Ocean”, a former Foreign Office chief has said as he backed the Chagos Islands deal that is set to cost the taxpayer billions of pounds.
Hitting out at critics who argued the UK should ignore a legal ruling to hand over the archipelago to Mauritius, Lord McDonald of Salford argued this was what “the powerful and unprincipled do”, such as Russia.
