The government's agreement to cede the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius is causing great controversy. Why?

Why are the islands British anyway?
The Chagos Islands, an archipelago of 58 islands in the Indian Ocean about halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia, were given to Britain by France in 1814 during the Napoleonic Wars. France ceded control of Mauritius and its dependencies, including the islands, which were valued for their coconut plantations and their position on trade routes between Africa and Asia. In 1965, shortly before granting Mauritius independence, Britain separated the Chagos Islands, renaming them the British Indian Ocean Territory, and paying £3 million to Mauritius. The following year, Harold Wilson's government leased the largest island, Diego Garcia, to the US for use as a military base, in exchange for a discount on Polaris nuclear missiles.

How did the agreement affect the Chagos Islanders?
It required the expulsion of up to 2,000 or so Chagossians, French Creole speakers also known as the Illois – descendants of African slaves brought to work on the plantations. The British authorities, who described the islanders as "some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure", drove them out by closing down the coconut plantations and, eventually, deporting the remaining residents to Mauritius and the Seychelles in the early 1970s. Many were left in the slums of the Mauritian capital of Port Louis, where suicides and addiction were common. A long-running campaign by the Chagossians eventually led to the UK granting them £4 million in compensation in 1982, on condition that they renounced all rights to return home. Following further legal battles, and in recognition of injustices they had faced, the islanders and their descendants were offered UK citizenship. Many came from Mauritius to live in Crawley, near Gatwick in Surrey.

How did Mauritius react to all this?
Mauritius has long claimed sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. It took the UK to the UN's International Court of Justice, which, in 2019, found that the separation of the islands from Mauritius was unlawful, and that the UK's continuing rule would be a "wrongful act". This was only an "advisory" judgment, not a binding one, which the UK could have ignored, but it was politically damaging. In the same year, the UN General Assembly voted by 116 to 6 to condemn Britain's occupation of the islands, calling for it to end "as rapidly as possible". Only the US, Israel and a few others voted in support of the UK; even close Nato allies abstained. As a result, Britain entered into negotiations with the Mauritius government.

How might this affect the US?
The US had sought out the Chagos Islands as a military base during the Cold War. At the time, Diego Garcia was the only US base between the Mediterranean and the Philippines. Today, it is still regarded as strategically vital. The prospect of Mauritian ownership is regarded with suspicion by many in the US, not least because Mauritius has close economic links to China. This posed a diplomatic conundrum for Britain.

How did Britain try to solve it?
Under the draft treaty agreed between Mauritius and the UK last October, Britain would cede sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius, but would also pay the Mauritian government to lease Diego Garcia, at a rate reported to be £90 million a year for at least 99 years, totalling at least £9 billion. Mauritius has agreed not to lease any of the other islands to rival powers. It was thought, by the Labour government and by UK officials, to be a satisfactory solution: righting historical wrongs and making sure that Britain complied with its legal obligations, but also safeguarding the military base for the foreseeable future. It was welcomed by the Biden administration, as well as by India, the dominant regional power; China did not object to it.

What went wrong?
The politics changed. Mauritius elected a new PM, Navin Ramgoolam, who demanded a chance to renegotiate: having previously called the deal "high treason", he asked for bigger up-front payments from the UK. President Trump was also thought to be highly critical: his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, argued that it "poses a serious threat to our national security interests in the Indian Ocean and threatens critical US military posture in the region". Negotiations have been paused to allow the Trump administration, which may now be softening its stance, to have its say. Meanwhile, the agreement with Mauritius has also been much criticised in the UK.

Why has it been criticised in Britain?
First, because of the cost. Reform UK's Nigel Farage asked how Keir Starmer could justify the UK being "prepared to give away a military base and pay £18 billion for the privilege" (the Government disputes that figure). The Tories, who began the negotiations when in power, are now strongly against it. "He's freezing pensioners, while shovelling money to Mauritius," complained Kemi Badenoch. The deal is also regarded by many as a betrayal of the Chagossians.

How is it a betrayal?
The Chagossians, now some 10,000 strong, have been given practically no voice in the negotiations. Some Mauritian Chagossians, such as the activist Olivier Bancoult, are in favour of the deal. But the 3,500 in Crawley are, according to their MP Peter Lamb, near-universally opposed. They see Mauritius as a distant and hostile power, which treated exiles badly, withholding from them compensation paid by the UK. And there is no guarantee that British Chagossians would be able to return to the islands, although Mauritians without roots there would, it seems, be able to. The activist Jemmy Simon, whose grandmother was expelled, argues that "it's not right for Mauritius to get sovereignty over the islands without us getting a say". She represents Chagossians who want a referendum to decide ownership.

Diego Garcia: a strategic asset
At the height of the Cold War, the US decided that it needed a strategic outpost in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia, a tropical atoll in the dead centre of the ocean and far from any threat, was ideal. Construction began in 1971. Today, Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia has an anchorage, an airstrip, and radar and communications facilities. It is home to about 2,400 people, mostly Department of Defence civilians. The roughly 400 US servicemen, and 40-odd members of the British Forces who "maintain sovereignty", see it as a plum posting, with its beaches and clear waters.

Diego Garcia's location allows for deployment of air and naval forces across the Middle East, East Africa and South Asia. It also provides a key refuelling and supply station. It is within striking distance of key maritime chokepoints, such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca. US bombers from Diego Garcia played a major role in both Iraq wars and the war in Afghanistan in 2001; during the war on terror, it was a "black site" where al-Qa'eda suspects were interrogated. It is known that China would like to establish a military facility in the central Indian Ocean; there are fears that it could build a spying hub on another Chagos island under Mauritian rule.

For years, the biggest threat to 007 "was the apocryphal 'woke police'", said Adam White in The Independent: a "mob of rainbow-haired bisexuals" determined to turn James Bond into a woman and replace his vodka martini with "vegan wine". But now, we know how Bond will really be killed off: through "a slow, sad corporate takeover". Last week, the Broccoli family yielded creative control over the franchise to Amazon MGM Studios.

For Brits, 007 "is not just A.N. Other action hero", said Janice Turner in The Times: "he's our soft power, our collective national id" – an alluring mix of "tradition and modernity" and "understated cool", "salted" with a dash of humour. Now, it's only a matter of time before Jeff Bezos and his algorithm-led streaming platform turn Bond into a bland, "Americanised" figure.

Still, the buyout is "grimly appropriate", said Madeline Grant in The Telegraph. "Bond films always mirror geopolitical reality": how fitting, then, that a tech giant from the US – so "vastly wealthy" and "culturally self-confident in a way we no longer are" – should be gobbling up "this hallmark of Britishness".

It's a "worrying" time for us fans, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. But this should at least end the Bond drought. New films used to come along every three years or so, but it has been four since Daniel Craig's swansong, "No Time to Die", and no new installment is in sight. This is largely due to infighting between Amazon (which bought MGM and the rights to Bond in 2017) and Barbara Broccoli, whose father launched the films in 1962. After one fractious meeting, she reportedly labelled Amazon executives "f**king idiots" for describing Bond films as "content". Now that the family has ceded their control – reportedly for a cool £1 billion – someone might "finally be motivated" to make a film.

There is a reason Bezos paid this "supervillain's bounty", said Alexander Larman in The Spectator: the deal has given Amazon what all studios covet – control over the series' intellectual property. Just as Disney has "so inexpertly done with Star Wars", Bezos will now milk the franchise for all it's worth: get ready for spinoffs galore, from Teen Bond to Blofeld's "origin story". It's a shame. Bond has endured "not because of the terrible quips" and martinis, but because Broccoli fiercely guarded the brand, making sure each film was an event. Now the floodgates are open for a vulgar free-for-all. That sound you hear is "1,000 Amazon executives rubbing their hands together with glee".

Ian Smith is one of Australia's most recognisable actors, but you may not know his name, said Sian Cain in The Guardian. For millions, he is simply Harold from "Neighbours", the daytime soap he joined in 1987, two years after its launch. Smith, 86 (pictured, above left), was one of the show's longest-serving cast members, appearing in more than 2,100 episodes over five decades. Harold was a stuffy but decent suburban patriarch – and an audience favourite: when the cast appeared at the Royal Variety show in 1988, it was at the request of the Queen Mother, a "Neighbours" fan. "She shook my hand and said: 'Oh Mr Smith, I do enjoy your Harold.'"

There was, however, a problem: he realised – "too late" – that although he is nothing like Harold, he'd played him for so long, he'd never be able to escape him. He'd love, he says, "to play something outlandish, like a vampire or a serial killer, but all the people in casting today were brought up with Harold". Has he made peace with that? "Unwillingly." It doesn't help that in the decades he was on the soap, he saw many actors "come and go" – but mainly go, and some to dazzling post-"Neighbours" careers.

Still, he doesn't want to look ungrateful. "My father had instilled in me to never walk away from money. And the money was very good. To be in work, I learnt, is a privileged position. And to be in permanent work, with holidays for Christmas, is fantastic."