Comparisons between Diego Garcia/The Falklands/Grenada are ridiculous.

So far as Diego Garcia is concerned, how do you make that out?

A small community living on remote islands had their right to live there undisturbed challenged by the ambitions of outsiders. And in both cases they were British possessions. That's what they had in common.

The threat they faced was different of course, and the enemy they were up against was different. And their fate was very different indeed. But that's what comparisons are about.

The threat for the people in the Falklands was that they would have to live under Argentine rule, and that they might have to share the islands with incoming settlers from the mainland. The threat for the people of Diego Garcia would be that they would be torn from their homes and dumped in a distant part of the world.

The enemy for the people of the Falkland Islands was the Argentine Government. The enemy for the people of Diego Garcia was the British Government, the very people to whom they should have been able to look for protection.

The fate - a period of occupation on the one hand, and on the other hand forty years of exile in squalid conditions, with no end in sight. Can anyone really imagine a British Government which will tell the Americans to get out of Diego Garcia before they want to go? For that matter, can anyone envisage an American Government that would comply with that unlikely demand?