Keir Starmer slammed for 'giveaway week' in scathing Chagos deal review

Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has a scathing verdict on Sir Keir Starmer’s deals on EU fishing rights and the Chagos Islands: "It’s been a giveaway week." The veteran Brexiteer says the "French are laughing their heads off" in the wake of the Prime Minister’s Brexit "reset" deal, which sees EU fishing vessels granted continued access to British waters until 2038.

"I think it’s a terrible, terrible deal and it’s done out of weakness," he says. He is no less dismayed that Britain has signed the controversial agreement to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands – home to the UK-US Diego Garcia military base – to Mauritius.Sir Iain now expects China to "muscle in" and expand its influence in the Indo-Pacific, predicting the arrangement, which is supposed to allow the UK to lease the base for 99 years, "won’t last long."

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"China wants to take control of that area because it cuts the trade routes off east-west,” he says. “It also allows them to influence events in the Middle East."

He believes Labour MPs and Foreign Office figures feel guilt about the British Empire deep in their “bones” and this leads them to make disastrous decisions when China is reshaping the world. "We have a new axis of totalitarian states," he warns.

"China, North Korea, Russia and Iran are working together to undermine democracies and destroy the free market. China has basically trashed the free market now because they subsidise businesses and they use slave labour and no private company can compete with them."

The rise of China as a military power makes it even more important to support Ukraine in its battle against the Russian invasion, he argues. If Vladimir Putin wins in Ukraine, he warns, "Taiwan is finished. China will know the West will do next to nothing about Taiwan."

He says he disagrees "fundamentally" with US Republicans who do not share his conviction that western democracies must stand with Ukraine. In particular, he cautions against any peace deal which would allow Russia to “regroup, come back and take the rest”.

He wonders aloud whether US politicians who are "moaning" about the war would display the same bravery in defending their homeland as Ukrainians demonstrate on the frontline. "You’ve got to hand it to them," he says. "They are fighting with courage."

He speaks as a former military officer who served in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. A petition calling for the Government to protect Northern Ireland veterans from prosecution has been signed by nearly 114,000 people.

There is deep concern at Labour’s plans to repeal the Conservatives’ Legacy Act which was intended to stop vexatious prosecutions of former soldiers. "No other country in the world would behave like this to their soldiers," he says. "It’s appalling."

He adds: "British politicians, I’m afraid, have no understanding of just exactly what it took to patrol those streets." He was good friends with Captain Robert Nairac – one of the "disappeared" who was murdered by the IRA and whose remains have never been recovered.

"He’s a hero and he’s been wiped off the record," he says. "The Government has made no issue about that at all as far as I can make out ever."

Sir Iain also served in Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – and attended talks on the future of the nation. It was there he decided he would like be involved in making important decisions and his appetite for politics grew.

He won election for the London seat of Chingford in 1992, taking over from Norman Tebbit, and he was soon marked out as a leading eurosceptic rebel. "The establishment was completely against all of us," he remembers.

"There was a small band of men and women [and] we were considered to be mad, bad and dangerous to know – but so was Churchill in the 1930s. Lots of other people who fought for what they believed in were always trashed by a very complacent establishment."

The term "Brexit" had yet to be coined but he had confidence Britain’s destiny lay outside the bloc. "I always believed that we would leave," he says. "I thought at the time we were so different from the European Union it would become impossible for us to stay."

He led the Conservatives from September 2001 until November 2003 but did not quit public life when his time helming the party ended. Instead, he founded the Centre for Social Justice think tank which laid out a sweeping vision for welfare reform.

When the Conservatives returned to power under David Cameron he was able to introduce Universal Credit as Work and Pensions Secretary. He still speaks with passion of the power of work to transform the lives of people who today rely on benefits by providing camaraderie, income and purpose.

"If they can work they will make friends in new businesses," he enthuses. "They will have the pride of that first pay cheque." Sir Iain is adamant Kemi Badenoch should be able to continue leading the party, despite a recent YouGov poll putting the

Conservatives in fourth place on 16%, behind Reform UK (29%), Labour 22% and the Liberal Democrats (17%). He describes Reform as a party of “maximum protest” but he insists that toppling another leader is not the answer to the Tories’ woes.

"There is no Messiah out there,” he warns. “This Messiah complex that we seem to have is a disaster for us and the search for this Messiah hasn’t worked so far and it’s not going to work."

He says the Conservatives must show voters "we are not just a political party that spends its time up in Westminster assassinating one another." Instead, the party must "earn the right" to be heard by a public which sees the Tories as "panickers because in the space of less than 10 years we have seen the back of five prime ministers."

He points to Margaret Thatcher’s early days as Tory leader. "Lots of people very quickly claimed she was hopeless, shrill, difficult, not the person who would lead us to glory,” he remembers, adding: “She got time to develop and, wow, did she develop.”

Despite his admiration for Britain’s first woman prime minister, he describes his wife, Betsy, as the “greatest influence” on his life. They wed in 1982 and he is a champion of marriage in Parliament and beyond.

"Marriage is the single greatest system for stability in society," he says. "I don’t understand why people feel so worried about saying the word ‘marriage’." This is the greatest institution, he declares, for “stability and hope and kindness."

Many of his Brexiteer comrades have long since left the Commons but this former Scots Guards officer is still on the political frontline and he has multiple missions to pursue. As the Tories adapt to the changes in the political jungle, this big beast may once again shape the Conservative future.