U.S. President Donald Trump has taken a hand in the ongoing Chagos Islands saga, calling Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s determination to give away the land beneath a vital joint UK-U.S. base in the Indian Ocean a weak and shocking act of stupidity.
The British government of Sir Keir Starmer giving the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), the formal name for the Chagos Archipelago which includes the island of Diego Garcia where the UK and U.S. share a major air, naval, and intelligence base critical to power projection in the Asia-Pacific region, is an act of stupidity, the U.S. President has said. Under the terms of the deal the UK government would hand the islands to Mauritius, itself a security concern given the country’s deepening ties to China, and then pay billions to lease the land back for 100 years.
The British government believes it has to do this because it was told to by a United Nations court, and given the present domination of the state by human rights lawyers including the Prime Minister and his Attorney General, this has apparently been taken very seriously. It has also been alleged that key British figures in this process were “too close to China” and to Mauritius.
Blasting the move in the early hours of Tuesday, President Donald Trump sarcastically decried the quality of a NATO ally that would hurry to dispose of the land under a “vital” joint military base, and said the UK was doing so for “no reason whatsoever”. President Trump wrote on Truth Social “The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of great stupidity”.
This act of weakness by bowing to a powerless UN body would have been clocked by Russia and China, Trump said. He compared the situation to Greenland, another island hosting an important U.S. military base whose European owner until lately seems broadly disinterested in defending its possessions. That islands can simply be given away from underneath U.S. military bases is “another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired”, said President Trump.
That the UK’s left-wing government immediately began a rush to give away its overseas territory almost immediately upon taking power has been a matter of great alarm to right-wing sovereigntists, with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK leading the charge on opposing the process. Mr Farage responded to Trump’s comments on Tuesday, stating “Thank goodness Trump has vetoed the surrender of the Chagos islands.”
The Brexit leader referred to how the White House had allegedly been lobbied into accepting the UK government’s bid to dispose of BIOT by Starmer’s allies, adding: “The Americans have woken up to the fact that they were lied to. They were told that the UK had no choice but to surrender the Chagos Islands. This was simply not true, and now they are angry with us.”
The British government also responded to Trump’s interjection by maintaining the fiction that keeping its own land in the Indian Ocean and not handing it over to an ‘ally of China’ is, somehow, a threat to national security. A government spokesman said that the UK will never compromise on national security and that:
“We acted because the base on Diego Garcia was under threat after court decisions undermined our position and would have prevented it operating as intended in future… This deal secures the operations of the joint US-UK base on Diego Garcia for generations, with robust provisions for keeping its unique capabilities intact and our adversaries out.
It has been publicly welcomed by the US, Australia and all other Five Eyes allies, as well as key international partners including India, Japan and South Korea.
The whole process of the BIOT giveaway has been plagued by claims and counterclaims of subterfuge and massive lobbying. As reported in 2024, it was claimed that the giveaway was pushed by the Biden White House in its last months in power, his administration having allegedly lobbied to get an agreement done before handing over power to President Trump. It was further stated that the U.S. government had privately warned the UK about the dangers of handing over the land the U.S.-UK joint military base sits on over China spying fears, even as Washington supported its ally the UK in public.
In the end, President Trump said last year the deal as presented to him “doesn’t sound bad”.
The House of Commons is due to vote on the so-called Chagos deal to hand the islands over to Mauritius again today, taking the surrender treaty one step closer to being enacted. The failure of the legacy-right Conservative Party to seriously oppose the giveaway — having got the ball on the matter rolling during their time in power — saw the defection of one of their Members of Parliament as recently as Sunday, with Andrew Rosindell crossing the floor to Nigel Farage’s Reform.
