MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

UK prime minister vows to be 'relentless' in defending the Falkland Islanders' choice

“We will always respect the rights of the Falkland Islanders to choose to be British,” Burnham said during the weekly Prime Minister's Questions

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the House of Commons on Wednesday that his government would be “relentless” in defending the right of Falkland Islanders to choose to be British, in a session dominated by defense spending and the sovereignty of overseas territories.

“We will always respect the rights of the Falkland Islanders to choose to be British,” Burnham said during the weekly Prime Minister's Questions, adding that the position “will never” change under his government. He did not mention Javier Milei or Argentina at any point in his remarks, and referred to the islands only once in a session lasting more than an hour.

His comments came in response to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who accused the Labour government of weakness on defense and sovereignty. Badenoch challenged the deal to transfer the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and then lease back the Diego Garcia base, which she put at £35 billion, and argued that Argentina had taken note of that decision and felt encouraged to press its claim. “They smell weakness,” she said, describing the Indian Ocean archipelago as British sovereign territory.

Burnham got a big cheer from Labour MPs when he called out Badenoch for trying to “point score” after she said Argentina was threatening the Falklands due to Britain appearing weak on the Chagos Islands. pic.twitter.com/nTbZdWrYJY

— Mirror Politics (@MirrorPolitics) September 9, 2026

Burnham replied that the United Kingdom would not surrender its Diego Garcia base and that it is in discussions with the United States on the matter. On military spending, he said his government would meet the NATO commitment of 3.5% by 2035, with an interim 3% target, and that details would come in the spending review. Badenoch countered that a decade was too long to wait. Asked whether the current chancellor of the exchequer had been right to resign as defense secretary earlier this year over the government's failure to commit to that 3% target, Burnham did not answer directly.

A day earlier, International Development Minister Kirsty McNeill had sought to lower the tone in Parliament, saying the United Kingdom wants to maintain a modern and constructive relationship with Argentina across a range of shared interests.

The session came as Argentina's government steps up its campaign against companies operating hydrocarbons in waters near the archipelago. On Monday it filed a criminal complaint in federal court against five firms linked to the Sea Lion project, invoking Article 7 of Law 26,659, which carries prison terms of five to ten years, and on Tuesday it raised to 60 the number of administrative proceedings opened over alleged breaches of Article 2 of the same statute. None of the allegations has been proven.

The trigger was Milei's televised address last Thursday, in which he argued for the first time that the islands' inhabitants have no right to self-determination. The Argentine president had previously expressed a wish that the islanders would “choose to be Argentine” and said their opinion could not be disregarded.

In the 2013 referendum, 99.8% of voters chose to retain the territory's status as a British overseas territory, a result successive British governments cite in response to the dispute. Sovereignty over the archipelago remains contested between London and Buenos Aires more than forty years after the 1982 war.