Donald Trump sinks Keir Starmer's signature project without waving his pen. This is 4D chess - Lee Cohen

Lee Cohen
Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:33:01 +0000
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In the clearest possible demonstration that Donald Trump is looking out for the welfare of the British people when their own government commits malpractice against them.

Trump has forced Keir Starmer to drop the legislation that would have handed the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Labour has run out of time.

The bill is dead before the end of the current parliamentary session and the King’s Speech next month.

Thank Heaven, Trump’s realism now sets the boundaries of Labour’s catastrophic strategic policy. Starmer’s Government lacks the authority to deliver even its own surrender.

Credit also belongs to Nigel Farage and GB News for forcing the Chagos issue into the American political conversation and maintaining relentless pressure on the story in the UK media landscape.

The facts remain blunt. Last year, Starmer signed an agreement to transfer the British Indian Ocean Territory, including the joint UK-US military base at Diego Garcia, to Mauritius.

Britain would then pay Mauritius roughly £35billion over 99 years to lease the base back. Ministers insisted the deal was essential.

An adverse ruling from the International Court of Justice was expected. Mauritius had challenged British sovereignty in international courts for years.

Without the transfer, they argued, the base’s operations would be imperilled, and Britain’s ability to project power in the Middle East compromised.

The deal always required two things Starmer could not guarantee: parliamentary approval and explicit American consent. The 1960s and 1970s exchange of letters that underpins the joint base cannot be altered without Washington’s agreement. Trump made that clear.

He initially backed the arrangement. He then reversed himself. He reversed again. And finally, he rejected it outright in an angry online post after Starmer refused to allow American use of British bases for strikes on Iran.

Labour ministers expressed private frustration at Trump’s shifts. The real failure belongs to Starmer. The episode is a staggering act of political malpractice: a government willing to gamble with national sovereignty and a vital strategic asset while presenting the concession as prudent diplomacy. It reflects a leadership culture either unwilling or unable to defend core national interests.

The legal and diplomatic reasoning offered for the handover is flawed at best and ideological cover at worst.

The base at Diego Garcia has supported American operations during the Iran war. Its location makes it a vital bulwark against Chinese influence across the Indian Ocean.

Trump’s objection rests on hard calculation: ceding nominal sovereignty introduces unnecessary risk and an open-ended multi-billion-pound liability.

Starmer’s approach was the opposite. Accelerate the transfer. Satisfy Mauritius and the courts. Present Britain with the bill to rent back its own strategic asset.

Reform UK and the Conservatives warned precisely this would happen. They fought the legislation in the House of Lords. Their scepticism has been vindicated in full.

The delay, first reported by The Times, is more than procedural embarrassment.

It is a national embarrassment, halted only through sustained external pressure that turned a domestic political miscalculation into an international spectacle.

Keir Starmer presides over a policy so widely rejected that it has become a symbol of governmental detachment from public sentiment.

The Chagos Islanders themselves have made the position clearer still. Forcibly removed decades ago and now resident in Britain, several travelled earlier this year to establish an encampment on the islands.

Their opposition underlines that the deal satisfies neither strategic necessity nor the claims of the people most directly affected. Starmer’s ministers ignored them in favour of an agreement with Mauritius that was never going to survive American scrutiny.

Starmer’s leadership is marked by arrogance and detachment. The controversy reflects a broader inability to command confidence either at home or abroad. The Chagos episode is not an isolated failure but part of a wider pattern of political weakness. The collapse of the deal is a rare moment where sustained external scrutiny aligned with domestic opposition, forcing a rethink of policy direction.

Government sources brief that talks with Washington and Mauritius will continue.

They have no choice. Without American consent, the deal remains impossible. The legislation has already lapsed. The parliamentary timetable has moved on. Starmer’s flagship sovereignty giveaway is stalled by the very ally he failed to consult properly before signing.

This episode is not an isolated misstep. It is the pattern of Starmer’s premiership rendered in miniature: ambitious announcements, costly concessions, and ultimate dependence on others to set the terms.

Britain’s territorial integrity, its military reach, its freedom from open-ended financial liabilities — all now rest more firmly in Trump’s hands than in the Prime Minister’s. The Chagos collapse proves it.

Labour entered office promising competence and seriousness on the world stage.

What it has delivered is a strategic asset placed in limbo, a £35billion liability deferred, and a public demonstration that Washington, not Westminster, now decides when Britain can give away its own territory.

Trump’s realism has spared Britain a permanent and expensive humiliation. Starmer’s Government has been exposed as unable to steer its own course.

When American leadership protects shared interests, it succeeds where Starmer’s progressive instincts have failed.

The Chagos Islands affair is a global verdict on Labour’s entire approach to British power.