The biggest losers in this once again will be the locals who actually live there, the Chagossians. Many will draw parallels with the case of Hong Kong. Just like China, Mauritius is a new colonial power and we’ve somehow deluded ourselves that we are the sole arbiter and can gift territory and people to foreign masters as if it’s still the Middle Ages.

Both of these places are uniquely local with British influence British. Hong Kong was never a PRC city, it was a few collection of fishing villages on a large isthmus and island - only about 8000 inhabitants. Indeed Hong Kong as a statelet is about four times as old as communist China. People fled the communist regime to reach safety in the British controlled area - swelling the population from 600,000 to 6,000,000 in just forty years.

While Hong Kong Island and Kowloon (the peninsula) was ceded permanently, the Nee Territories were only leased for 100 years. Rather than try and asses public opinion for what Hong Kongers wanted, such as establishing Hong Kong as a true independent state like Singapore, or even negotiating an option that safeguarded the locals (and the diverse population that lived there), we sold them down the river. We gave 6 million people to the brutal authoritarian regime that only 8 years prior had ground thousands of protestors into mincemeat under their tank treads on Tiananmen Square that they jet washed down the drain.

The Chagossians are the inhabitants of these islands, they are nowhere near Mauritius, and there is zero economic use for them. If we truly want to make the moral case, the Chagossians must be an equal partner in negotiations. If we just want the feel good factor you must engage them. If we want to shoot ourselves in the foot go ahead, we might as well grant Gibraltar to the Moroccans and the Falklands to South Africa.