UNION Jacks hanging from every house. A portrait of the King in every kitchen. A spoonful of Marmite stirred into your tea. The Chagos Islands are the most British place on Earth.
I recently returned from a fortnight’s holiday there, in a traditional seaside bed-and-breakfast where they kick you out at 10am and you’re not allowed back until teatime, and I loved it.
The palm trees lining the seafront – a side-effect of the tropical weather, which like true Brits the locals never stop moaning about – are reminiscent of 1950s Torquay. The sense of military rule is marvellously wartime.
And when you turn on the television, which is no filth-spewing flatscreen but a bulky humming box, there’s a non-stop diet of On The Buses, Benny Hill, and Brideshead Revisited. What very heaven.
The thought of these red, white and blue islands, where all activity halts at noon for a lung-bursting spontaneous rendition of Land of Hope and Glory, being handed over to foreigners is nonsensical.
After all Mauritius, the aggressive power taking dominion, is 1,400 miles away compared to Britain’s positively neighbourly 5,799. They have no more right to this Crown territory than they have to perform a traditional Mauritian Sega dance at the Royal Variety Performance.
And believe me when you’re there, sipping warm Horlicks in a striped deckchair while a bowler-hatted gentleman on a lunchtime stroll spears pigeons with his umbrella and short-trousered schoolboys bowl hoops down the street, nothing could be more absurd.
They don’t know about this betrayal yet. Chagos allows only patriotic news which a Labour election win most certainly is not. But on their behalf I weep for the loss of this last bastion of Empire, islands so British in every aspect they put our own to shame.
