About a year ago, Keir Starmer laid out a deal to hand the Chagos Islands, Britain’s last remaining colony in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius. It was supposed to be a win-win-win.
America would keep its enormous military base on Diego Garcia. The base would be legitimised under international law, relieving years of diplomatic pressure on Britain. And Mauritius – bribed away from China and towards the West – would get a handful of faraway islands and billions in cash for renting out Diego Garcia.
The Chagossians, as to be expected, were not approached for comment.
At the time, this ‘momentous’ and ‘historic agreement’ was warmly welcomed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, as well as American spy chiefs.
Labour proudly touted it as proof that the special relationship would be safe in the hands of ‘Trump-whisperer’ Starmer. Of course, the fact that British taxpayers would shoulder all £3.4 billion for leasing back the island from Mauritius must have helped.
Starmer’s “act of GREAT STUPIDITY”
Imagine Keir Starmer’s surprise, then, when he opened up Truth Social one morning to read about his “act of GREAT STUPIDITY”:
“Shockingly, our ‘brilliant’ NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER…”
Brave Sir Keir rushed to the phone, bent his jellied spine, and sent his tongue across the Atlantic to verbally polish Trump’s boots.
Trump’s bootleather received such a good shining that Trump soon generously conceded that it was “the best [deal Starmer] could make”. The next day, the US State Department formally signed off on the deal because, at the end of the day, this deal is in the best interests of British and American imperialism.
But Trump is not always guided by ‘the best interests of American imperialism’. Trump is a law unto himself, whose caprice depends upon which side of the bed he woke up on as much as it does the ‘wise’ counsel of the US State Department.
Unfortunately for Sir Keir, the optics of weak little Britain giving away territory ultimately weigh heavier in the balance for Trump than do the hypocritical vagaries of international law.
Just a week later, Starmer had the unusual temerity to refuse America the use of RAF bases on Diego Garcia for pre-emptive strikes on Iran – not out of principle, of course, but for fear of the political and economic consequences of being dragged into such a catastrophe.
Enraged, Trump once again took to Truth Social to blast the Chagos Islands deal as a “blight on our great ally”, as it would jeopardise America’s ability to “eradicate” Iranian women and children.
Of course, deal or no deal, Britain would still police the base. Trump is more interested in humiliating Starmer for stepping out of line. And it has worked.
The whole arrangement is now stuck in limbo. It looks likely that Trump will veto it entirely, which would open up Britain to being sued by Mauritius. Even worse, Trump could negotiate directly with Mauritius, which would cut Britain out of its prestigious role as policeman and janitor of the islands entirely.
What was supposed to be a quiet switcheroo that would prove the value of Britain to America has turned into its opposite. It has become yet another episode in Starmer’s unending political nightmare – one which makes it embarrassingly obvious who really calls the shots for little Britain.
Playing ping pong with small nations
All this is music to the ears of Britain’s right-wing rabble. Although the deal was initiated under Sunak and Biden, ‘traitor’ Keir Starmer’s Chagos ‘betrayal’ has become their cause célèbre.
The rump of the Tory Party managed to stall the Chagos bill in the House of Lords. The Telegraph has published hundreds of articles attacking it from every conceivable angle: from the US not being allowed to use it to nuke anyone, to Chinese spies, to the danger to the environment!
Liz Truss and Boris Johnson have been whispering in Trump’s ear to warn that the proposed 99-year lease is too short – it is mightily optimistic of them to presume that their imperialist order will survive that long.
In this offensive, these ‘defenders of the rights of oppressed peoples’ (excepting the Palestinians, the Sudanese, the Yemenis, etc.) have found a native lever in Misley Mandarin, recently elected first minister of the newly created Chagossian government-in-exile.
A former British soldier, Misley – like most Chagossians – opposes the islands being pawned off to Mauritius. Rightfully so: when the Chagossians were forcibly deported there by the British, they were treated like second-class citizens, and held in poverty with no rights.
His strategy, however, has been to make a deal with the devil. In numerous appearances on GBNews, he has appealed to Tory Lords and Reform MPs to keep Chagos as the ‘British Indian Ocean Territory’, i.e. a colony from which the Chagossians are banned.
In a letter penned from Margaret Thatcher House, he begged US imperialism to step in and stop the deal for reasons of national security. He even offered to rename one of the islands in the archipelago after Trump.
In order to force the issue, he and a group of Chagossians (plus an ex-Tory MP) this week sailed to one of the islands, planted the American flag and set up camp. British coastguards were trying to remove them… until a British judge flying overhead ruled that they could stay.
Nigel Farage, unlikely champion of the right of nations to self-determination, posted a video from a beach in the Maldives threatening a voyage to resupply these pioneers, though he was blocked by an angry phone call from the Mauritian government.
I have been denied entry to the Chagos Islands by the UK government. pic.twitter.com/Q58RC7HQTY
— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) February 21, 2026
His brief ‘human rights’ crusade, which featured this little holiday and a speech at a Somaliland independence protest, curiously ended before he got to occupied Bethlehem or ruined, massacred Gaza. His next stop was Gorton and Denton.
Chagossians used, Starmer humiliated
All this would be a farce, were it not such a tragic mockery of the dispossessed Chagossian people. After having their cause ignored for decades, they have now been picked up as a political shiv.
These right-wing nutters do not care about the self-determination of the Chagossians. They are representatives of British imperialism, the same force that removed the natives from the island at gunpoint, built a military base on their homes and blocked them from ever returning.
Like hundreds of other small peoples used and abused by the British Empire, the Chagossians are being cynically used as a temporary, convenient tool. They will be discarded as soon as the imperialists’ aims are met.
For Farage and Co., this is purely a question of imperial nostalgia and prestige: were the islands to be handed over, the sun would literally set on the British Empire.
As for Trump, he hasn’t even mentioned the Chagossians; for him this is a question of a military base, an indispensable platform for robbing oil tankers and destroying the Middle East.
Britain and Mauritius have both proven themselves enemies and exploiters of the Chagossian people. But whichever of them ends up sovereign, American generals and their death machines will be the real power in Diego Garcia.
As long as that is true, the Chagossians will have no say. For them to be free, the base must be dismantled, and the fate of their homeland put in their hands.
But this whole farcical saga raises another question of self-determination: that of British imperialism. Britain is not an independent country. It is a third-rate power whose outsized position in the world is built on its ‘specially’ servile relationship with US imperialism – as the setup on the Chagos Islands so vividly displays.
In the past, Britain was overjoyed to play deputy to the world’s police chief. But now, Britain finds itself in a bind.
Under Trump’s volatile ‘America First’ policy, that relationship is not always in its best interests. Abroad, it is exposing ‘Global Britain’ for what it is: an inept has-been. At home, ‘never-here-Keir’s’ foreign policy was supposed to distract from the domestic shambles. Now, his upcoming U-turn on the world stage will open him up to even more attacks from the right.
Yet, without that relationship, Britain’s elites would have to admit that they rule a defenceless husk with absolutely no influence on the world stage. Though it might growl at its fate, frail and pathetic British imperialism has no choice but to go with America, dragged like a dog on a leash, into disaster, and ultimately, into the dustbin of history.
