James Cleverly slammed Labour for handing the Chagos Islands to Mauritius on Thursday, which has triggered in-fighting among the Tories.
Cleverly, currently the shadow home secretary, has condemned the government for giving up sovereignty over the archipelago after more than 50 years.
He wrote on X: “Weak, weak, weak! Labour lied to get into office. Said they’d be whiter than white, said they wouldn’t put up taxes, said they’d stand up to the EU, said that they [would] be patriotic. All lies!”
Yet, Cleverly was the foreign secretary under Liz Truss in 2022 when the UK began negotiating with Mauritius to hand the British Indian Ocean territory over, and said he wanted to reach a settlement by early 2023.
One of Cleverly’s rivals in the Tory leadership race, Tom Tugendhat, was quick to seize the opportunity to drive the knife in.
He said giving up Chagos was a “shameful retreat” and that it was “disgraceful that these negotiations started under our watch”.
According to the Financial Times, another rival camp said: “James can expect a lot more scrutiny in the coming days.”
However, Cleverly’s team have pinned the blame on then-PM Truss for opening the talks instead.
They also noted the negotiations did not proceed until after Cleverly left the Foreign Office in November 2023.
It was not long before Truss’ team piped up, and tried to pass the buck onto her predecessor, Boris Johnson.
According to the Independent, her spokesperson said: “It was Boris Johnson who asked Liz to talk to prime minister Jugnauth about this at COP26, which she did. But she was absolutely clear that we would and should never ceded the territory.”
Meanwhile, Johnson wasted no time in hitting out at Labour’s deal while speaking to GB News on Thursday, saying: “It’s nonsense. It’s total nonsense.
“Why are we doing this? Sheer political correctness, a desire to look like the good guys. The desire to look as they were unbundling the last relics of our empire. It’s nonsense.”
In turn, Labour has pinned the blame on the Tories, suggesting Cleverly “put our national security interests at risk” by potentially leaving the Chagos military base in the hands of the court, according to The Independent.
Foreign secretary David Lammy has also claimed that the move would “strengthen our role in safeguarding global security”.
Speaking to Times Radio, Jonathan Powell – former chief of staff for Tony Blair and special envoy for negotiations between the UK and Mauritius – downplayed the backlash.
He said: “These are very tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean where no one actually goes.
“So I don’t think we should be too worried about losing that bit of territory. We’re probably losing more to tidal erosion in the East Coast than that.”
He added that the US has been “intimately involved in the negotiations” and “secured all of their red lines”, pointing to US President Joe Biden’s statement welcoming the “historic agreement”.
“This notion that somehow we’ve given the Chagos Islands to an ally of China is rubbish,” Powell claimed.