UK politics live: Furious Chagos Islands row erupts as Tories accused of risking losing key air base in courts

More Tory leadership candidates have joined Robert Jenrick in criticising the British Indian Ocean Territory decision.

James Cleverly said: “Weak, weak, weak! Labour lied to get into office. Said they’d be whiter than white, said they wouldn’t put up taxes, said they’d stand up to the EU, said that they be patriotic. All lies!”

Fellow rival Tom Tugendhat said: “This is a shameful retreat undermining our security and leaving our allies exposed.”

He claimed the Foreign Office had “negotiated against Britain’s interest” and it was “disgraceful that these negotiations started under our watch”.

Mr Tugendhat added: “Lord Cameron rightly blocked them only to see it back under David Lammy’s complete failure of leadership.”

But the Tories were responsible for starting the negotiations over the deal when they were in power.

Former foreign secretary Mr Cleverly opened talks on the sovereignty of the archipelago in November 2022.

Proposals to change the law to give terminally ill people “choice at the end of life” are to be introduced in parliament this month.

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater said she hoped for “honest, compassionate and respectful debate” when her Bill, which will be tabled on 16 October, is considered in the Commons.

The conversation around legalising assisted dying has been increasingly in the spotlight for the past year, with high-profile figures including broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen calling for a parliamentary debate and vote on change.

Dame Esther said she is “thrilled and grateful” at the news, which she said could mean “terminally ill people like me can look forward with hope and confidence that we could have a good death”.

She said: “I never thought I might live to see the current cruel law change.

“But even if it is too late for me, I know thousands of terminally ill patients and their families will be given new hope.

“All we ask is to be given the choice over our own lives.”

Ms Leadbeater said her private member’s bill (PMB) would establish in law the right for terminally ill eligible adults to have choice at the end of life to shorten their deaths and ensure stronger protections for them and their loved ones in the aftermath.

She said: “Parliament should now be able to consider a change in the law that would offer reassurance and relief – and most importantly, dignity and choice – to people in the last months of their lives.”

A furious row has erupted over Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to hand hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, securing the future of a secretive military base in the Pacific Ocean.

Rivals battling it out for the Tory leadership accused the prime minister of weakness and said the decision would leave the UK’s allies exposed.

Our political correspondent has the full story below:

Boris Johnson has branded his former chief of staff Dominic Cummings as “weird” and compared him to a “homicidal robot” as he blamed him for his downfall as prime minister.

In his new autobiography Unleashed, the Mr Johnson charted the collapse of his relationship with Cummings from the high point of them working to win the EU referendum in 2016.

But he has alleged that Cummings lack of gratitude for his efforts to defend him over potentially breaking lockdown rules with an infamous trip to Barnard Castle in 2020 led to the former chief of staff using Partygate as a form of revenge.

Our political correspondent David Maddox has the full story below:

Chagos islanders have criticised Labour’s deal to return most territory of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, ending a long-standing dispute.

They have slammed the governments for being “excluded” from the negotiating table during the deal.

In a statement, Chagossian Voices said: “[We] deplore the exclusion of the Chagossian community from the negotiations which have produced this statement of intent concerning the sovereignty of our homeland.

“Chagossians have learned this outcome from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland.

“The views of Chagossians, the indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored and we demand full inclusion in the drafting of the treaty.”

The envoy behind the Chagos Islands-Mauritius deal has said Chagossians were treated “shamefully” when they were removed from the islands in the 1960s.

Jonathan Powell told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: “What we did in the 60s, what Britain did, was wrong. We treated them shamefully.

“And that’s why previous governments have given them British nationality, British citizenship, and so on.

“So we setting up a fund that will be administered by the Mauritian government because this is now Mauritian territory, so we can’t say who goes back.”

But under the deal, Chagossians are not able to return to Diego Garcia, the UK-US military base in the Pacific Ocean.

He added: “Many of Chagossians are either Mauritian citizens or have the right to Mauritian citizenship.

“Going back to the islands … it’s going to be difficult. They’re very remote and very hard to live on, and the life there before was very difficult.

“But yes, we are committing ourselves to help on visits, and we’re committing to a fund to help on resettlement if that’s possible.”