Member

If there is only one issue on which we should stick, it is this fundamental principle of consultation. It is the basis of the whole world order—the Lockean concept of government, that sovereignty is vested in the people and comes upwards. If the Chagossian people decide that they want to part ways with us, I will accept the result with good grace. But if they want to go back as British overseas subjects and return to their archipelago to tend the graves of their fathers, harvest their old coconut plantations and live once again in their old lands, surely that is their most fundamental right as a people.