British sovereignty of Gibraltar and Falklands ‘not up for negotiation’, Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman says
British sovereignty of Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands is not up for negotiation, the prime minister’s spokesman has said.
Questions over the government’s commitment to maintaining the British overseas territories as part of the UK have been raised after the government announced on Thursday it was handing the Chagos Islands over to Mauritius.
Sir Keir Starmer’s official spokesman said the government was ruling out negotiations over Gibraltar, claimed by Spain, and the Falkland Islands, claimed by Argentina.
“There is no question about British sovereignty of those two, it is not up for negotiation,” he said.
Following Thursday’s announcement on the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, Argentina’s foreign minister promised “concrete action” to ensure the Falklands were handed to Buenos Aires.
However, Sir Keir’s spokesman said: “The Falklands is not up for discussion – that remains our position.
“Chagos is a unique situation with a unique history, it has no bearing on other territories.”
Gibraltar’s chief minister Fabian Picardo said the UK’s decision on the Chagos Islands has “no possible read across” to Gibraltar as the situations “are completely different”.
Falkland Islands governor Alison Blake said the UK government’s commitment to the islanders’ UK sovereignty was “unwavering” and “remains undiminished”.
Argentina claims the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic as its own. Pic: PA
The UK-US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest Chagos island, will remain. Pic: Reuters
Sir Keir’s spokesman said the former Conservative government had carried out 11 rounds of negotiations over the Chagos Islands since 2022 and the government had picked them up and reached an agreement.
The archipelago between Mauritius and India had been at the centre of a 50-year dispute after Mauritius gained independence from the UK in 1968 but the Chagos Islands did not.
Mauritius has been trying to claim the Chagos Islands since then but the UK has resisted as it has a key naval support base with the US on the largest island, Diego Garcia.
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Chagossians ‘feel betrayed again’
The native Chagossians were expelled from the islands for the base to be built, with most going to Mauritius or the Seychelles, and about 3,500 coming to the UK since 2002.
Under the new deal, the military base will remain under UK and US jurisdiction for at least the next 99 years.
Senior Conservatives criticised the decision as they fear it could grant China a foothold in the Indian Ocean as Beijing is heavily invested in Mauritius.
But Sir Keir’s spokesman said the deal settles the legal challenges, contested sovereignty and international court tribunals.
A protest was taking place outside parliament today by Chagossians who are angry they were not included in the talks for their homeland’s sovereignty.
Paul Atkins could move one step closer to becoming the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s new crypto-friendly chair, with a Senate committee hearing reportedly in the works for March 27.
President Donald Trump nominated Atkins to lead the SEC on Dec. 4, but his marriage into a billionaire family has reportedly caused headaches with financial disclosures — delaying his potential start date.
While it isn’t clear whether the White House has produced those papers to the Senate, Senate Banking, House and Urban Affairs Chair Tim Scott is reportedly eyeing a March 27 hearing to review Atkins’ standing, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller said in a March 17 X post.
“No clarity yet on whether the committee has Atkins’ paperwork in hand, but either way, this is the most momentum we’ve seen so far.”
Atkins would, however, need to be voted in by the Senate at a later date.
Mueller also said the Senate banking committee is also planning to hold a bipartisan meeting on Atkins’ nomination on March 21.
Source: Eleanor Mueller
It follows an earlier March 3 Semafor report, where Mueller said financial disclosures had held Atkins back from scheduling a Senate hearing to review his standing.
His wife’s family is tied to TAMKO Building Products LLC — a manufacturer of residential roofing shingles that reportedly turned over $1.2 billion in revenue in 2023, Forbes said on Dec. 14, 2024.
“It’s a lot to go through,” one former Senate Banking Committee staffer reportedly told Mueller on March 3.
“But he got named so early on, so I think that’s why people are starting to be like, ‘What the hell’s taking so long?’”
Atkins previously served as an SEC commissioner between 2002 and 2008 and worked as a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP in New York before that. He is expected to regulate the crypto arena with a more collaborative approach than former SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
It’s been almost four months since Atkins was chosen by Trump to lead the SEC on Dec. 4, and over two months since Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20.
A late start for an SEC chair wouldn’t be too unusual, however.
The two most recent SEC chairs, Gary Gensler and Jay Clayton, started on April 17, 2021, and May 4, 2017 — months after presidential transitions occurred in those years.
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Meanwhile, Mark Uyeda has been serving as the SEC’s acting chair since Gensler left on Jan. 20.
Since then, the Uyeda-led SEC has established a Crypto Task Force led by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce and canceled a controversial rule that asked financial firms holding crypto to record them as liabilities on their balance sheets.
The SEC has dropped several investigations and lawsuits that the Gensler-led commission filed against the likes of Coinbase, Consensys, Robinhood, Gemini, Uniswap and OpenSea over the last month.
The SEC is also looking to abandon a rule requiring crypto firms to register as exchanges and may even axe the Biden administration’s proposed crypto custody rules, Uyeda said on March 17.
Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered
The US Securities and Exchange Commission could change or scrap a rule proposed under the Biden administration that would tighten crypto custody standards for investment advisers, according to the agency’s acting chair, Mark Uyeda.
In prepared remarks to an investment industry conference in San Diego on March 17, Uyeda said the rule proposed in February 2023 had seen commenters express “significant concern” over its “broad scope.”
“Given such concern, there may be significant challenges to proceeding with the original proposal. As such, I have asked the SEC staff to work closely with the crypto task force to consider appropriate alternatives, including its withdrawal,” Uyeda said.
The rule was floated under the Biden administration during Gary Gensler’s tenure leading the regulator. It aimed to expand custody rules for investment advisers to any and all assets held for a client, including crypto, and upped the requirements to protect them.
Source: SEC
This meant that investment advisers would have to custody their clients’ crypto with a qualified custodian. Gensler said at the time that investment advisers “cannot rely on” crypto platforms as qualified custodians due to how they operate.
The proposal caused friction with Uyeda and Commissioner Hester Peirce, along with industry advocacy bodies who claimed the rule was unlawful and dangerous.
“How could an adviser seeking to comply with this rule possibly invest client funds in crypto assets after reading this release?” Uyeda remarked at the time. He did, however, support the proposal despite disagreeing “with a number of provisions.”
Peirce, who was the sole commissioner of the five to vote against the rule, said at the time that the proposed rule “would expand the reach of the custody requirements to crypto assets while likely shrinking the ranks of qualified crypto custodians.”
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Uyeda’s latest remarks come days after he said on March 10 that he had asked SEC staff “for options on abandoning” part of a proposal pushing for some crypto firms to register with the regulator as exchanges.
The Trump-era SEC has also killed a rule that asked financial firms holding crypto to record them as liabilities on their balance sheets, called SAB 121.
In December, President Donald Trump picked former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to take over from Uyeda to chair the agency. This is now a step closer, with a Senate hearing reportedly slated for March 27.
Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has dismayed green Conservatives by declaring the UK’s target to reach net zero by 2050 “impossible”.
In a speech on Tuesday, the Conservative Party leader is expected to tell what she says is the “unvarnished truth” that the net zero goal cannot be achieved without “a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”.
Ms Badenoch will say she is not making a “moral judgement” on net zero or debating whether climate change exists.
But, as she begins to renew party policy, she will say that current climate policies are “largely failing” to improve nature and “driving up the cost of energy”.
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Net zero means cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, which cause climate change, to virtually zero, and absorbing the rest elsewhere.
Scientists say the world must reach that point by 2050 to avoid even worse flooding, wildfires, and other damage – but that action is lagging behind.
The UK has already cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half.
The next half is expected to be more challenging as it requires changes to people’s heating, cars and diet – things that often need upfront costs, but could save people money in the long run with the right government support, advisers have said.
Ms Badenoch’s plans take the Conservative Party to its most sceptical position on net zero yet – a target set in law by Tory Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019.
And it comes at a time when Reform UK is questioning climate science and US President Donald Trump, leader of the second most polluting country in the world, is dismantling nature protections.
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Kemi Badenoch heckled by climate protesters on Monday
Ms Badenoch’s “policy renewal” she is outlining on Tuesday will see shadow cabinet members set core priority questions as a move towards formulating new policy for the party.
Sam Hall, of the Conservative Environment Network of 50 MPs, said it was “a mistake” for Ms Badenoch to have “jumped the gun on her own policy review and decided net zero isn’t possible by 2050”.
He said the Tory leader was right to question Labour’s climate plans, but that the target is driven “not by optimism but by scientific reality; without it climate change impacts and costs will continue to worsen”.
Abandoning the science would risk losing voter’s support, he added.
Four in five Conservative voters in last year’s general election and two thirds of Reform voters thought it was important that the government cared about tackling climate change, according to polling by More in Common.
Shaun Spiers, executive director of thinktank Green Alliance, called it “disappointing” to see Ms Badenoch “turn her back on cleaner, cheaper, homegrown energy”.
“It is even more disappointing to see the leader of the opposition take cues from climate deniers across the pond,” he added, in a veiled swipe at President Trump.
“Net zero is not ‘nice-to-have’, it’s an achievable, evidence-based target designed to protect the UK from the worst impacts of climate change.”
The UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC), which advises governments on how to reach net zero, said last month the goal is “ambitious” but “deliverable”.
But it also warned as Labour took office last summer that, at that time, just one third of the cuts to greenhouse gases needed to reach an interim 2030 target were covered by a “credible plan”.
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