Dr Austen Morgan is a barrister at 33 Bedford Row Chambers.  He is the author of: Pretence: why the United Kingdom needs a written constitution, London 2023.

With US launching attacks on Iran, the crisis over Diego Garcia – the formally joint UK/US military base on the Chagos Archipelago, part of our overseas territory or colony (the British Indian Ocean Territory [‘BIOT’] established in 1965) – is becoming global.

The argument over Britain not allowing its use to the US for the initial airstrikes last weekend has amplified it.

When the UK granted Mauritius its independence eventually in 1968, the country’s leaders – in return for financial payments – agreed to the hiving off of BIOT.  That did not stop Mauritius’s later leaders playing the decolonization card: the February 2019 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (which did not bind the UK); and the May 2019 resolution of the UN general assembly (which is not part of international law).

Prof Philippe Sands KC of Matrix chambers represented Mauritius over the years.  His head of chambers became Richard Hermer KC, now the attorney general.  And the latter had been led, at Doughty Street chambers, by Keir Starmer KC, the just about hanging on prime minister.  These three musketeers share a – incorrect – view of the rule of law as dominated by  international lawyers and judges.

It was the labour government of Harold Wilson which ordered the expulsion of the Chagossians from the Archipelago (1968-73), to the Seychelles and to Mauritius, where they were treated badly (as I learned on a visit in 2023).  Many of the Mauritian Chagossians now live as British citizens in Crawley, near Gatwick.

Supporters of the Chagossians, those who believe in the rule of law, and those concerned with international security (particularly the threat of growing Chinese influence in Mauritius), have had to contend with Jonathan Powell, now the national security adviser in the cabinet office, and a Sinophile, the architect of the May 2025 – leaseback – UK/Mauritius treaty, which is mercifully well and truly stalled in parliament.

Faced with a fickle and unpredictable Donald Trump, who is being pushed hither and thither whilst pushing back himself, opponents of the current labour government’s Chagos sellout would be advised to concentrate upon three legal issues.

First, the direct action by Misley Mandarin, the unrecognized first minister of the Chagos, in settling on L’Île du Coin (120 miles from Diego Garcia).  Sir Keir issued a removal notice within 24 hours, and the Chagossians secured an interim injunction from the BIOT chief justice, James Lewis KC, a London barrister.

A claim is waiting to be made in the administrative court in London, against the second threatened expulsion of Misley Mandarin’s elderly father, under whatever basis the government is relying.  This will involve questions of international law, turning on the British passports of the occupying Chagossians on sovereign UK territory.

Second, the 1966 US/UK agreement, which established the Diego Garcia base (and on which the UK must rely in an English court): including, in clause (2), ‘those administrative measures that may be necessary to enable any such defence requirement to be met’, subject to seemingly the duty of the commissioner of the territory to take account of ‘the welfare of the inhabitants’ but only ‘in emergency circumstances requiring temporary use of an island or part of an island’.

It is clause (1) which should interest the US the most: ‘The territory shall remain under United Kingdom sovereignty.’  That is what the UK promised in 1966.  And the US is entitled – under the 1969 Vienna convention on the law of treaties – to rely upon that permanent feature.

President Trump, therefore, has to do nothing but rest on these legal laurels.  Under the Jonathan Powell scheme, he would have had to have agreed to delete clause (1) of the 1966 agreement.

And third – a point well spotted by English supporters of the Chagossians – the 1983 UN convention on the law of the sea (or ‘UNCLOS’).  In 2010, Philippe Sands had represented Mauritius in an arbitration against the UK’s marine protection area around the Chagos Archipelago.  He succeeded in part, but the award included that the arbitrators did not have the power under UNCLOS to determine sovereignty.

Nevertheless, when David Lammy, as our hapless foreign secretary, being forced to concede that the international court of justice had only produced an advisory opinion, the scare was raised about a second (hypothetical) judgment, from this time the international tribunal for the law of the sea.

Section 2 of UNCLOS defines the concepts limiting territorial seas.  But article 298 comprises ‘optional exceptions to applicability of section 2’.  Paragraph 1 reads: ‘When signing, ratifying or acceding to this Convention or at any time thereafter, a State may, without prejudice to the obligations arising under section 1, declare in writing that it does not accept any one or more of the procedures provided for in section 2 with respect to one or more of the following categories of disputes’.

Sub-paragraph (b) includes ‘disputes concerning military activities, including military activities by government vessels and aircraft engaged in non-commercial services…’.

In conclusion, the focus should be on legally challenging the second labour expulsion of the Chagossians.  And, as regarding the ninnies in our foreign policy establishment (frightened no doubt by the seemingly all powerful attorney general), the UK should execute a declaration that the joint Diego Garcia military base does not fall under UNCLOS.

Dr Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.

 A war of choice, fought from the air, of contested legality but undoubted legitimacy. A successful military mission, highlighting the utility of force. A United States-led conflict, avoiding boots on the ground, intending to effect political change from 30,000 feet.

Is Iran 2026, Kosovo 1999 2.0?

The bloody century’s brief, last war underlines the fluidity of international law. Many of the 1.6million people living in Kosovo today are grateful that Britain and NATO intervened decisively on their behalf, as lawyers quibbled from the sidelines.

The Kosovo war had its roots in the post-Cold War break-up of Yugoslavia, which had resulted in four years of ethnic conflict, primarily between rival factions in Bosnia. The impotence of the United Nations-led peacekeeping effort was underscored by ethnic cleansing on Western Europe’s doorstep, the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica.  It came a year after the genocide in Rwanda, in which 800,000 died.

This week the current can’t do Labour Prime Minister has consigned Britain and the Armed Forces to being bystanders. What a sorry contrast to another Labour PM who believed in Britain taking a global lead.

Tony Blair was clear that Britain’s Armed Forces should be deployed on humanitarian grounds; “saving strangers”, as one commentator described it. From 1997, British foreign policy, along with the national interest, would also include an ethical dimension. Blair stated traditional foreign policy was “flawed and out of date”.

In a speech on the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, the Defence Secretary George Robertson confirmed Britain’s military would not only be  more mobile, better manned, better supported and equipped, but “better able to act as a force for good in the world.” This would be tested months later in Kosovo.

In 1998, tensions grew between Serbia and Kosovo, its semi-autonomous enclave with a majority ethnic Albanian population. Violence escalated between Serb militias and the Kosovo Liberation Front, reflecting by the January 1999 Račak massacre in which 45 civilians were executed. Fearing ethnic cleansing, tens of thousands of Kosovars fled their homes.

Blair demanded a military intervention to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and “set about trying to build a consensus for action”. He argued that the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic would continue to act with impunity because of the previous failure of will by the West to intervene in Bosnia.

Unable to build a coalition to commit ground troops, Blair persuaded the Clinton administration and many European leaders to back an air campaign.

NATO’s Operation Allied Force began on 29 March 1999. By then, an estimated 350,000 Kosovars were displaced. It ended on 10 June. More than 38,000 sorties were flown, almost 10,500 of them strike sorties against Serbian targets.

The campaign achieved its objectives: Serbia’s forces withdrew from Kosovo, Kosovar refugees returned, Belgrade surrendered control over the enclave and KFOR, an international security presence, moved in. It was a triumph of strategic air-power.  Contrary to PM Starmer’s assertion at Wednesday’s PMQs, Kosovo highlighted that major political change can be brought about from the skies.

Have American military decision-makers studied Kosovo before Epic Fury? If so, they will be aware of the negatives. Allied Force was expected to last three days. Collateral damage included 87 civilians killed in a refugee camp and a strike on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. With Serb civilians wearing bulls-eye targets gathering in the capital, Serbia did not lose the battle for public opinion across Europe.

As the conflict continued, Blair proposed the “Doctrine of the International Community”. It suggested five guidelines before military intervention. Similarly in 2001, the UN’s Responsibility to Protect doctrine set out the duties of individual states and of the international community to prevent four mass atrocity crimes.

Today, Tony Blair might suggest that Operation Allied Force could be judged illegal but legitimate. It averted a humanitarian catastrophe. Alas, another war – Iraq – still mired in the quagmire of contested international law and just war assessments, casts too large a shadow for either his views or his record to be assessed objectively.

Since 1979, the theocratic regime in Iran has brought global instability and internal tyranny. In 2022 during the Women, Life, Freedom protests, women’s eyes were specifically targeted, a horror repeated in January’s protests in which an estimated 30,000 were killed. On Monday, President Trump described Epic Fury in moral terms: a “righteous mission”.

In the 1990s, against a background of a new world order, globalisation and the “CNN effect” giving new insight into human suffering, international law in relation to military intervention was questioned, notably by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Which should prevail: state sovereignty or the interests of international peace and security?

If, as is said, war is too important to be left to the generals, it should never be left to the lawyers.

The pros of nacho parenting

The cons associated with nacho parenting

The key to navigating this successfully

Julie Redmond is a former nurse and Conservative candidate for Westminster City Council and the London Assembly. She has seen firsthand the impact of mental ill-health, addiction and homelessness in Westminster, both on the frontline of nursing and through her work as a community campaigner.

Step off the Tube in central London and the reality hits you. How often do we emerge onto the pavement and see a tent pitched against railings, or someone clearly in the grip of addiction, dealing, or injecting in plain sight? In Vincent Square, Pimlico and many other Westminster wards, residents regularly report open drug use and associated anti-social behaviour spilling into our residential streets, and in some cases in close proximity to our children’s nurseries and schools. Alongside petty theft, shoplifting and intimidation, the daily erosion of public order.

Westminster Conservatives will not accept this as the new normal.

The current response to tackling these issues is fragmented. The council funds public health. The NHS commissions treatment. The police enforce the law. Probation manages prison release. Charities conduct outreach. The system as a whole lacks integration. The result is a revolving door: too often mental health challenges lead to addiction, addiction leads to prison, prison leads to the street, the street leads to reoffending and round again.

It is time for a more serious and structured response.

I am proposing a Westminster Street Recovery & Public Safety Plan centred on the creation of a 50-bed Recovery and Stabilisation Centre, a true Centre of Excellence for mental health stabilisation, drug recovery, and structured street transition.

This would not be a simple shelter. It would be a controlled, clinically led facility with four clear pathways.

First, individuals leaving prison particularly high-risk or repeat offenders, would be transferred directly into short-term stabilisation, linked to probation supervision and structured recovery plans. No more release with a travel warrant and nowhere to go.

Second, hospital discharge patients with addiction or homelessness risk would move straight into supported stabilisation beds. No discharge back to the street.

Third, individuals arrested for possession or anti-social behaviour linked to drug misuse could be diverted into mandatory engagement at the centre as part of a conditional caution. Treatment with consequences. Refusal to engage would mean prosecution proceeds.

Fourth, those with severe mental health needs and dual diagnosis would receive rapid psychiatric assessment and, where required, referral under the Mental Health Act.

This model is not theoretical. Finland has shown that a properly funded, integrated Housing First strategy can dramatically reduce rough sleeping by combining permanent accommodation with wraparound support. Switzerland, after facing an escalation in open drug use in Zurich in the 1990s, combined firm policing with medically supervised treatment and heroin-assisted therapy. Open drug markets were dismantled. Overdose deaths fell. Public order was restored. It’s a shame that Sadiq Khan has not chosen to learn from these approaches during his decade as Mayor of London.

The common thread was clarity and integration. Approaches did not oscillate between leniency and crackdowns. They built capacity, aligned agencies and made long-term commitments.  London struggles because we have not done the same. Treatment beds have declined. Mental health services are stretched. Housing shortages undermine recovery. And enforcement without pathways simply has people travelling round the destructive circle.

The cost of 50-bed stabilisation centre would be modest in comparison to the combined costs of policing our troubled communities, imprisoning addicts, A&E admissions, and emergency accommodation. Funding could come from a blend of council public health budgets, NHS Integrated Care Board contributions, Ministry of Justice support for prison-release cases and targeted Home Office grants.

The principles are straightforward: compassion with enforcement; treatment with accountability; structured recovery pathways; public safety restored.  Westminster has the visibility, the resources and the responsibility to lead and should not tolerate open drug addiction and street disorder any longer.

Safer streets and structured recovery are not opposing goals. They are the same goal. Compassionate Conservatism in action.

Israel’s racist colonial regime has demanded the immediate evacuation of the southern suburb of Lebanon’s capital Beirut. Fascist Israeli government minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that the southern suburbs will be “like Khan Younis”:

The threat has forced thousands of Lebanese civilians to flee on foot amid heavy bombing that has flattened or badly damaged large areas of the city. Israel has notionally had a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon since its 2024 terrorist attacks using exploding pagers killed and maimed thousands across the country, including children. However, the occupation regime has violated it multiple times daily and is now attempting to invade southern Lebanon. It is reportedly meeting heavy resistance from Lebanese militia, with several tanks destroyed and retaliatory attacks on Israeli bases.

The evacuation order shows the extent of the area of the city Israel thinks it has the right to order residents to flee:

Israel, which has already begun to sell Lebanese land it doesn’t own, to would-be illegal settlers, has also ordered the evacuation of all of southern Lebanon up to the Litani river, which runs more than half the length of the country.

Israeli military spokespeople have confessed to Hebrew-language broadcasters that Israel did not expect the fierce resistance its troops have encountered.

The rogue and terror state being its usual appalling self.

Featured image via the Canary

US generals have told a ‘closed door’ Congressional meeting that their air defences in West Asia won’t be able to keep up for long with the rate at which Iran is firing its drones and missiles. The stark warning contradicts US president Donald Trump’s wild and self-contradicting claims on his ‘Truth Social’ platform that the US has “unlimited” stocks of air defence missiles but somehow “we are not where we want to be”.

Iran has been launching a stream of attacks on US bases and interests in their vassal states in the region, as well as on Israel. These have mostly consisted of its basic ‘Shahed’ drones, yet US systems have failed to intercept many even of these low-cost weapons despite abundant footage showing multiple interceptors launched at each incoming drone:

The senior officers briefing members of Congress included General Dan Caine, the chair of the ‘Joint Chiefs of Staff’. They acknowledged the “thousands” of Iranian attack drones were forcing the United States and its allies to expend huge quantities of extremely expensive defensive weaponry and even then many were getting through.

Many analysts say the US only has stocks to last a week or two at best and potentially only a few days. Iran has also destroyed two US radar installations essential for targeting incoming missiles, as well as at least two ‘THAAD’ interceptor batteries. The THAAD launchers are the most expensive air defence systems in the world. The United States reportedly only has three of these specific radar installations.

The chaos caused by the constant Iranian barrage saw Kuwaiti-based US systems shoot down three US fighter jets in a single day on 2 March 2026.

Featured image via the Canary

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte appears to suggest in an interview that the alliance is a “platform for the United States to project power on the World stage”.

His revealing comments come as increasing divisions are seen across NATO member states. This divide comes in their leaders’ position on the US-Israel war of aggression on Iran. Whilst France, UK, Germany and Italy have come to Trump’s heel like good little lapdogs, Spain has strongly condemned the illegal war and refused any military involvement in Western attacks on the Middle East.

Rutte’s comments have sparked widespread disgust as finally it is clear that the ‘defence alliance’ is merely a front for US imperial interests.

Finally!

The head of NATO has said the quiet bit out loud:

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“NATO is a platform for the United States to project power on the world stage.”

Ireland must never join this openly war mongering alliance that hides behind a “defensive” smokescreen.

pic.twitter.com/9jjDltMtCi

— Daniel Lambert (@dlLambo) March 5, 2026

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‘Making use of key assets here in Europe’ — NATO

For the past 2.5 years, citizens across NATO states have become increasingly concerned. In fact, they have often expressed anger about their governments’ response to the US-backed genocide in Gaza carried out by Israel. Now, Rutte’s comments appear to confirm what we have long suspected. The transatlantic alliance is merely a vassal group for furthering US power and imperialism across the World.

Rutte’s controversial comments in full:

NATO is there to protect us collectively against any adversary, be it Russia or whoever, or terrorism.

But also, it is a platform for the United States to project power on the world stage. Because this whole operation now, this whole campaign in Iran, needs these basic requests to be positively engaged with by NATO allies, as they are doing, making use of key assets here in Europe.

So, the fact that we stick together, the United States and Europe and Canada, is crucial also for the success of this American-Israeli campaign.

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However, Spain is currently standing firmly in opposition to the ‘American-Israeli campaign’. This clearly indicates that the illegal war does not have the collective support that Rutte so desperately wants to assert above. This all comes whilst Israel is rapidly losing support amongst US citizens as consent plummets.

Furthermore, if Rutte’s comments can be relied upon, then the reverse must also be true. Therefore, if Europe and Canada staunchly abide by international law, refraining from goose-stepping to the war-hungry US and Israeli presidents, then the illegal campaign would surely fail.

The UK needs to leave @NATO

It is a protection racket for America https://t.co/VaOPuVfRFL

— An Honest Mouthful (@ahonestmouthful) March 5, 2026

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Calls have since been made for Ireland to stop in its tracks comes as it appears to bow down to the NATO ‘war machine’. Ireland has suffered at the hands of colonial Britain so it should know better than to further the imperial ambitions of the US and Israel:

IRELAND MUST NEVER JOIN NATO https://t.co/hWU1mRqlt8

— Alison 3652444 (@AlisonAon) March 5, 2026

‘Grubby footnote in an ugly march toward European rearmament’

Our own Robert Freeman discussed Ireland’s recent steps closer to NATO, writing recently:

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has acknowledged he will be spending almost €1 million on a war room. He didn’t describe it that way, of course, instead referring to:

“…secure meeting facilities to allow continued engagement with international partners.”

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He did, however, accept that the room, designed to be surveillance proof, would be key for meetings of the nations backing Ukraine in the war against Russia. Martin revealed a further clue to the purpose of the project by saying it is “NATO proof”. In other words, up to the standards required by the NATO war machine.

Most of the Irish population would like the country to be NATO proof, but in entirely the opposite meaning of the way in which Martin used the term. I.e. – proofed from co-option by the belligerent and expansionist alliance.

Freeman concluded:

It amounts to one more grubby footnote in an ugly march toward European rearmament that will ultimately make the world less, not more, secure. It fills the coffers of the military-industrial complex, whose profits lie in death and destruction. With greater wealth, their ability to push governments in that direction increases.

The Irish population strongly backs neutrality, partial though it may always have been. That voice must now be heard louder than ever to pull Ireland back from the clutches of the NATO death cult.

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It might not even be that hard to achieve, as far-right supporters of Trump’s barbarism in the Middle East are asking the US to withdraw its forces. Please, do keep threatening us with such a good time:

That summit would be a good time to announce American withdrawal from Europe and NATO. That would force the UK and other European countries that have omitted to rearm and tackle the Islamist crusade to reconsider. https://t.co/1WWPe2hVLO

— RoJo (@Twit_200124) March 5, 2026

US must be kicked out

This revelation from Rutte is hardly a surprise. Many have raised repeated concerns about the nefarious intentions at work in NATO. We also wrote last month about NATO’s ‘highest profile corruption scandal’ exposed by the Arms Trade Corruption Tracker (ATCT). The ATCT published a damning report in which corruption has been exposed between staff at NATO and Elbit Systems. Elbit Systems is an Israeli arms company that has sites across the UK and across the West.

Thankfully, some NATO staff members have resisted the alliance’s direction of travel and growing corruption. Yet those who show such courage soon face the consequences. We wrote last month:

Suggesting internal whistleblowers are facing typical abuse and negative consequences as a result of raising concerns about internal corruption, they [ATCT] added:

“The fallout did not stop with the suspects. Inside the alliance, senior officials began raising alarms of their own. The NSPA’s Director of Human Resources and its Chief Audit Executive and Head of Investigations flagged internal corruption and wrongdoing within NATO’s structures. Their interventions came at a cost: both saw their positions either suspended or left unrenewed.”

We must resist this march to war. It is clearly not in the interests of ordinary people trying to live safe and secure lives. After all, it is only in the interests of those with power who will profit. As a result, member states must hold firm and reject Mark Rutte’s invitation to allow the US to use “key assets” across the West. Going further, we should revisit all agreements for US military to be on British soil reducing their ability to ‘project power’ beyond its borders. 

If we do not, we risk turning an illegal war into our own — while cementing our status as a threat to world peace and stability.

Featured image via the Canary