Every time the row over the Chagos Islands comes back into public view, Britain looks weaker, crueller, and ever more strategically incoherent.
When the UK agreed last year to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, ministers presented it as a tidy piece of feel-good decolonisation: a legal fix to a lingering dispute, paired with a long-term lease ensuring continued Western access to Diego Garcia, one of the most important military bases on the planet.
The government insisted nothing vital was being lost. That outlandish lie has been under intense pressure for more than a year as truth after truth has been revealed.
Leading experts and members of the House of Lords have proven in report after report that the islanders will see no justice in having their homeland handed to Mauritius.
The waters surrounding the island – recognised as one of the (if not the) most important unspoilt marine environments on earth – are being handed to a nation with no capacity to look after it, which ranks at the very bottom of all major environmental tables.
Although Starmer’s lawyer friends, who act for Mauritius, paint this as a shambles as decolonisation, the reality is that it is Mauritius which seeks to occupy and exploit the islands, and it is they who will settle there, not the native Chagossians.
They continue to provide no answer for why £30bn could not instead be spent helping Chagossians settle away from the base, providing opportunities to work on the base, and to spend the remaining £29.9bn on much-needed defence spending.
It's clear that the government has dug in and that no amount of valiant work in the Lords is enough to kill this deal. It had been hoped that Trump’s arrival in the White House would block the deal, but, in a surprise for many of us in foreign policy circles, Trump gave his support for the deal. Now that support has been rescinded.
Keir Starmer must stop Britain’s Chagos surrender before Donald Trump does - Azeem Ibrahim
|Getty Images
US President Donald Trump has publicly denounced the deal as “an act of great stupidity”, stopping just short of a full veto on the deal. Starmer, David Lammy, and others at the heart of the blundered Chagos negotiations repeatedly insisted that without US backing, the deal could not happen.
Now, they suggest that Trump is merely trying to connect the deal to British support for his annexation of Greenland. It’s a half-truth.
Strip away the rhetoric, and the core critique lands uncomfortably close to home. Britain has given up sovereign control of a strategically irreplaceable archipelago in return for promises, paperwork, and a lease agreement that any future Mauritian government may yet revisit at the behest of China.
In an era defined by hard power competition, Trump sees Chagos for what it is: trading a freehold for a leasehold and trading away leverage to please Russian and Chinese judges at the UN.
Britain, meanwhile, acts like a shamed country that doesn’t respect its own right to act and do good in the world. Diego Garcia is the linchpin of Western military reach across the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and East Africa. It supports intelligence, logistics, air operations, and deterrence.
Countries like China, Russia, and the U.S understand exactly what such infrastructure is now worth, and certainly do not pay to retain access to what they once fully controlled. Trump fired on his Truth Social that “there is no doubt China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness”.
The Starmer government’s persistence reveals a deeper problem: a governing mindset that treats openly political lawfare as if it were impartial and binding.
Britain once understood that strategic interests sometimes require political resolve, not quiet acquiescence.
My latest book, A Greater Britain, lays out the reform and strategy required to reposition Britain as a country that acts on the world stage, rather than one merely acted upon.
There is also a credibility issue. Allies do not judge one another solely by the fine print of treaties; they judge by instinct, posture, and precedent. What lesson is absorbed when the UK voluntarily gives up territory hosting one of the West’s most critical bases?
That Britain will prioritise comfort and embarrassment about colonialism over strategic endurance. That it will retreat first and negotiate later.
Argentina and Spain will watch these developments with interest. The real danger of the Chagos decision is not legal. It is about Britain’s role in the world.
It signals a Britain that no longer fully trusts its right to act as a serious power – a country that manages decline rather than resists it.
If Starmer really perceives this threat and has the political instinct, he will abandon the Chagos deal and use Trump’s comments as the excuse.
If he persists and puts Britain on a collision course with Trump, the choice will be taken away from him, and we shall all look ridiculous.
Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter
More From GB News