Forget about Andy Burnham – Donald Trump is about to end Keir Starmer’s career. The Chagos mess feels like a private embarrassment, but Chris Riches says it’s about to turn into the kind of humiliation that ends careers without warning.
A Farce That Could End Starmer’s Tenure
Imagine giving your home to your next-door neighbour for free, then paying them to park your car on the drive. It sounds like a Monty Python sketch, but thanks to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s woke-obsessed Government, his Chagos Islands blunder is sadly no joke. This farce could end up seeing US President Donald Trump step in and take the archipelago in the Indian Ocean for himself, in yet another damning humiliation for Great Britain.
Once owned by France, the Chagos Islands passed to the UK under the 1814 Treaty of Paris after Napoleon’s first fall, and were administered from nearby Mauritius. In 1965, the UK detached the islands from Mauritius, renaming them the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), so it could lease Diego Garcia to the US for a strategic military base, and shamefully removed 2,000 Chagossians to Mauritius and the Seychelles. It was a security issue, but not the UK’s finest hour.
Starmer’s Controversial Deal
Since Mauritius won independence in 1968, it has argued that the Chagos Islands should be returned to it. Starmer’s Government, especially his controversial Attorney General, Lord Hermer, has sought to do just that. They have even looked to lease back the joint UK/US base on Diego Garcia for £101 million per year for 99 years. This means giving Mauritius a free house and leasing back the drive for £10 billion. Hardly the deal of the century.
There are two problems with this madness. Firstly, Mauritius is a close ally of Iran and China, so the US fears they could open up the surrounding Chagos waters to China’s huge ‘fishing’ fleets, which can then spy on Diego Garcia. Secondly, and this one’s particularly baffled the rest of the world, Mauritius has never owned the Chagos Islands. How do you return something to someone when they’ve never owned it?
Legal and Historical Complexities
A 2023 ruling by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) endorsed a non-binding advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2019. The ICJ ruled that Britain’s 1965 separation of the Chagos Islands from Mauritius was unlawful. Yet the Maldives argues that it, too, has historical claims to the archipelago dating back centuries. Crucially, Chagossians are not united behind the handover. Many do not want to be ruled by Mauritius and want to remain linked to Britain. Just like the fate of Greenland or the Falkland Islands should be up to its inhabitants, many Chagossians say they should be given the same right.
US Intervention and Political Fallout
Last year, Starmer’s Government signed a controversial agreement transferring sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius as the first stage of the deal, but the US strongly objected, and in April, the deal was paused indefinitely. Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Shockingly, our ‘brilliant’ NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital US Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. There is no doubt that China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness. The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.”
As my excellent Express colleague Tim Newark wrote in April about Lord Hermer’s many ‘interesting’ ideas: “It all fits very neatly into a Left-wing agenda to discredit our past and make us feel ashamed to be British.” But ironically, if the deal still goes ahead, it could be the final nail in Starmer’s political coffin, never mind the looming leadership challenge by hopefuls Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting. Last weekend, it was reported that the US may buy the Chagos Islands off Mauritius if the UK does finally ratify that 2025 agreement and hand them over to secure the joint military base. It would be this Government’s finest act of humiliation: the UK gives something to Mauritius for free that they have no actual rights to, then they flog it to the US and make an absolute killing.
The ‘Infinite Monkey Theorem’ says if you give an endless number of monkeys a keyboard and an infinite amount of time, they will type the complete works of William Shakespeare. They still wouldn’t think up something as daft as Starmer’s Chagos deal.
