The Chagos Test

The Chagossians had their day in the House of Commons again this afternoon.

Theirs is one of the truly good causes, and Jeremy Corbyn has been active in it for decades.

Although it has never been partisan.

All three governing parties of the last 50 years are at least complicit in the mistreatment of the Chagossians, while their supporters have come from all parties, and continue to do so.

Still, Corbyn is the first Leader of any party to be drawn from among those supporters.

There is a Chagos Test to be applied to noisy supporters of the Falkland Islanders, whose eviction no one has ever suggested, not even when Margaret Thatcher was preparing to sell very sovereignty over those Islands to the highest bidder.

If they do not also support the Chagossians, whose cause is active and whose case is pressing, then they deserve to be disregarded with contempt.

This broadly applies to loud invocations of "self-determination" in general.