Christopher Howarth

We’re biased, but we reckon the #BIOT flag is among the best in the world. It was gifted to the Territory by Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the 25th anniversary of BIOT (which celebrated its 60th anniversary last year). His Majesty Charles III gave permission in October 2025 for it to be updated, to incorporate his preferred Tudor Crown. Note the lack of red velvet in the crown - it needs no adornment. There’s more about the flag on our website. biot.gov.io/governance/fla…

I really like @SDoughtyMP. He is decent, clever and patriotic, and in politics for all the right reasons. This was us swimming in the bracing seas around the Falkland Islands a couple of years ago. He could not have been tougher in support of those islanders' right to self-determination. Yet, as the Minister for the Overseas Territories, he is now being forced to trot out the most absurd piffle about the Chagos Islands. Incredibly, despite everything, Labour is STILL trying to hand the islands to Mauritius. Starmer STILL won't accept that the return of Chagossians to their ancestral lands has altered the facts on the ground. In his Commons statement just now, Stephen said something that must have made him wince inside: "The delay to the Treaty will be sad news to the majority of Chagossians, who rightly see it as the only viable means to a sustainable programme of resettlement, which Mauritius would be able to implement under its terms." This is unadulterated bilge, and he knows it. Mauritius has no plan for resettlement. Indeed, it refuses to recognise Chagossian identity at all, insisting that the Îlois are so many Mauritians. The reason that the community is so strongly against the handover is precisely that it would mean the end of any hope of a return. Instead of trying to breathe life back into their treaty, ministers should do the moral thing and lean into the resettlement. A KPMG report ten years ago found that a viable community could be sustained there for - even on Labour's figures - less than a sixth of what ministers want to give to Mauritius. Letting the Chagossians go home would right an ancient wrong and, because the archipelago would then be inhabited and with a right to self-determination, genuinely secure the future of the base. It is going to happen sooner or later, so why not act now and salvage some credit from the sorry episode?

Believe it or not, HMS Anson is in the Strait of Gibraltar.. Looks she is coming in. @NavyLookout @UKDefJournal @WarshipsIFR @IBallantyn @akefford