Finally, following years of negotiations, the Labour administration announced on Oct. 3 that — after more than half a century — it would give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, albeit with carve-outs to protect the U.K./U.S. airbase on Diego Garcia.
Looking back, Sands sees Britain’s EU departure as a major contributor. “Brexit was a handmaiden to the 2017 vote at the U.N., and without the decision to have a vote and then the vote itself, there wouldn’t have been an ICJ ruling,” he says. “So it is perfectly logical to say that Brexit contributed to this point.”
But Richard Gowan, U.N. director of the International Crisis Group, believes the U.K. would have lost the vote even if the EU had united behind it.
“The General Assembly is a venue where non-Western countries have a built-in majority, and sorting out the unfinished business of decolonization is a perennial priority,” he says.
“I think it is also true to say that the U.K. had not focused very much on the General Assembly in the years before 2017, as its focus at the U.N. was the Security Council,” Gowan adds. “After its set-backs in 2017, the U.K. mission in New York rebooted its approach to the General Assembly, and invested more in diplomacy there. I think Brexit may have been a factor, but it was not the only factor.”
Samuel Jarvis, a senior lecturer in international relations at York St John University, who has co-authored a paper on the U.K.’s declining influence at the U.N. post-Brexit, also believes the matter isn’t quite so clear-cut.
