❓WHAT HAPPENED: Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has withdrawn the Chagos Island Bill finalizing Britain’s surrender of the Chagos Islands, which host a strategic U.S. base, after President Donald J. Trump branded the deal an “act of great stupidity.”
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Keir Starmer, Donald Trump, and Mauritius, which was set to take control of the islands.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The bill was expected to be debated in the House of Lords on Monday, but was delayed on Friday.
💬KEY QUOTE: “An act of great stupidity.” – Donald Trump
🎯IMPACT: The decision has delayed the ratification of the treaty and sparked debate over UK sovereignty and international law.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has finally been compelled to retract his Chagos Island Bill, finalizing the surrender of the British Indian Ocean Territory, or Chagos Islands, to Mauritius, following opposition from the Trump administration. Notably, the Chagos Islands include Diego Garcia, home to a strategic British-American military base.
The bill, which was slated for debate in the House of Lords on Monday, is in limbo, ostensibly because it has emerged that Starmer’s deal with Mauritius might breach a 1966 treaty between Britain and America that the Chagos Islands “shall remain under United Kingdom sovereignty.” However, it seems likely that the real reason for the deal’s suspension is President Donald J. Trump publicly branding it “an act of great stupidity,” as Mauritius is an ally of China. Starmer had previously claimed Trump’s comments were revenge for his stance on Greenland, and that the deal would go forward regardless of his intervention.
Starmer had agreed to pay Mauritius billions of pounds in order to continue leasing Diego Garcia—which Britain currently controls as its sovereign territory for free—for 99 years, and the Trump administration had until recently publicly assented to the deal, despite private reservations. British opposition figures such as Trump ally Nigel Farage had long been lobbying Trump to oppose the deal, on the basis that Mauritius could undermine Chagos even with the lease by leasing another island nearby to China, or otherwise interfering with its operation.
President Trump’s patience with Starmer on courtesy appears to have snapped after he publicly opposed U.S. efforts to acquire Denmark, despite having no national interest in the territory. Ludicrously, Starmer had argued that no decision about Greenland could be made without the Greenlanders’ consent, while explicitly refusing to grant the Chagossians a say over their islands’ transfer to Mauritius, which they almost universally oppose.
Starmer’s Labour Party government had argued that transferring Chagos to Mauritius is unavoidable, due to an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling in Mauritius’ favor. However, the ICJ ruling was advisory and non-binding, with Britain under no legal obligation to not just surrender the islands but also pay Mauritius for the privilege of doing so. Notably, Starmer’s negotiator, Attorney General Richard Hermer, despises the British Empire and supports reparations, and worked with Philippe Sands, a British lawyer assisting Mauritius in its claims, for ten years.
Sands is also a personal friend of Starmer, who is a left-wing human rights lawyer by background, with many suspecting the trio’s motivation in putting together a Chagos deal so lopsided against Britain’s national interests stemmed from their personal, “anti-imperialist” politics.
Mauritius is over 1,000 miles from Chagos, and it has no Mauritian population.
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