A close personal friend of Keir Starmer who joked about “humiliating Britain completely” shared an £8 million legal fee pot for his work negotiating the controversial Chagos Islands handover that could cost British taxpayers up to £30 billion.
Philippe Sands KC, a founding member of Matrix Chambers where Starmer was previously co-head of chambers, served as chief legal counsel to Mauritius between 2010 and 2024 during negotiations that resulted in Britain agreeing to cede sovereignty of the strategically important archipelago.
Official Mauritian budget documents show at least £8,300,000 was allocated to the legal teams working for Mauritius across the negotiating period. A £2 million fixed fee covered work between 2010 and 2015, with a further payment exceeding £1.3 million recorded in 2022/23 alone. Sands’s exact personal earnings remain unknown, though his role as chief counsel would have secured him the largest individual share, with potentially an additional bonus upon deal completion according to one international lawyer.
Sands was photographed controversially hoisting a Mauritius flag over the Chagos Islands in 2022. The following year he joked about “humiliating Britain completely” during a Cambridge University talk.
The deal signed on 22 May last year sees Britain hand sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius and lease back the Diego Garcia military base for 99 years at an average cost of £101 million annually. Sands was dismissed as Mauritius’s chief legal counsel in 2024 but received an honorary degree from Cambridge University last week for his achievements.
Labour MP Graham Stringer, who has urged colleagues to block the deal, told the Daily Mail: “Philippe Sands is making a fortune representing the interests of a foreign country. Sands, the Prime Minister and the Attorney General all believe that international courts, dominated by judges from China, are more important than our own democracy.”
Stringer branded Sands a “mercenary” who was “pretending to care about rights” whilst working against Chagossians who do not want Mauritian control.
British Chagossian Beatrice Pompe, who obtained a High Court injunction temporarily preventing the UK from signing the deal, called Sands a “snake.” She stated his significant fees demonstrated he “pretended to work for the good of the Chagossian people but was in it for himself,” adding: “He’s clearly supporting wherever the cash flows.”
Sands’s connections to senior government figures extend beyond Starmer. Attorney General Lord Hermer worked with Sands at Matrix Chambers for 10 years. Another team member, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, got to know Starmer through their shared work in international law and delivered a joint speech with him at Chatham House in 2013. Alison Macdonald QC also worked alongside Starmer in joint Law Lords proceedings in 2006.
Sands campaigned for Starmer to become Labour leader in the party’s 2020 election, describing him as “generous, humorous and empathetic.” In 2016, Starmer tweeted that he would be “interviewing my friend Philippe Sands tonight at the launch of his book.” Sands also interviewed Starmer at a literary festival in 2019 for a talk titled “Brexit Britain: The State of the Union.”
Starmer visited Mauritius in 2013 in a trip apparently arranged with Sands’s assistance. Sands was subsequently granted Mauritian citizenship and received the country’s highest civilian award, the Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean, for his role in securing the territory.
In evidence submitted to the House of Commons in 2024, Sands argued Britain was in “illegal occupation” of the territory and compared the situation to Russian occupation of Crimea, Chinese claims in the South China Sea and South African control of Namibia.
In his 2022 book The Last Colony, Sands claimed Britain’s promotion of self-determination for the Falkland Islands but not Chagossians was racist, stating it shows “one rule for whites, another for blacks.”
Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel said: “Keir Starmer’s ‘great friend’ Philippe Sands is key to the Chagos Surrender that is undermining our national interest and our security. Labour and their lefty lawyer friends cannot be trusted to stand up for Britain on the international stage.”
Chagossian campaigner Jean-Francois Nellan previously questioned whether Starmer’s friendship with Sands was behind the government rushing through the deal, asking: “Why are they rushing this? Is it because the Prime Minister is friends with Philippe Sands?”
One International Court of Justice judge who ruled Britain should return the islands to Mauritius “as rapidly as possible” in 2019 is a former Chinese government official who subsequently backed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The UK originally purchased the Chagos Islands for £3 million in 1968. Mauritius argued it was forced to surrender the territory as a condition of gaining independence from Britain.
Donald Trump initially branded the deal “an act of great stupidity” due to Diego Garcia’s strategic importance as a joint UK-US military base but later reversed his position, describing it as the “best” deal Britain could have made.
An FCDO spokesperson stated the Diego Garcia base is “crucial to the security of the UK and our key allies” and that the treaty “guarantees that UK-US operations at the base will continue for generations to come.”
Sands has been contacted for comment. The deal’s potential £30 billion total cost to taxpayers and its implications for British sovereignty over strategically important territory continue to face parliamentary scrutiny.
