Is the Chagos Islands sovereignty deal dead? by Tessa Clarke,editor, THE CHAGOS FILES
To much international media fanfare, this week President Trump once again slammed the “ridiculous” and “terrible” UK sovereignty deal. The one that grants Mauritius sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, the British overseas territory, including the island of Diego Garcia home to a UK-US military.
This time Trump humiliated his British counterpart to his face in front of the press at the United Nations, New York. The few times it was on Truth Social, his social media platform.
As countless journalists pointed out, before new Prime Minister Andy Burnham had met Trump, No. 10 issued a press release saying Burnham “underlined his commitment to working with Mauritius and the United States on a way forward.” He added that the respective UK and Mauritius foreign ministers would meet to “strengthen the relationship.” So the deal was going ahead, albeit needing US support.
After a private one-on-one facetime with the President this week, Burnham seemed to distance himself from former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s foreign policy decision. “I’ve inherited the situation and we need a resolution,” he said, denying ownership of the policy.
At the same time Blue Labour MP Dan Carden criticised the treaty deal this week, adding to those who had done so earlier this year such as Graham Stringer, Labour MP for Blackley and Middleton South, who branded the plan "terrible" and called for the government to stop the legislative process.
Opposition political party MPs including Nigel Farage, Reform UK leader, who lobbied the US administration last week against the deal, have also been adding political pressure on the government to drop the deal. Dame Penny Mordaunt, a former Secretary of State for Defence (Con), pointed out on X that the deal does not “secure the base” as Government spokesmen repeatedly said but rather constrains future ops, prevents the placing of sensors, requires the UK to sight our foes on defence planning, means the UK can’t use its preferred contractors and means we lose control over the electromagnetic spectrum, ending her message with, “Please read the ruddy thing!”
Daniel Hannah, former Conservative MEP and now Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) points out in the Telegraph newspaper, Liberal Democratic MPs, TheNewsAgents journalists and The Independent newspaper are also publicising their opposition to the treaty deal.
In the face of this the Government is committed still to relinquishing British sovereignty over the islands for legal and ideological. As Wes Streeting, the Foreign Secretary, confirmed on Sky News, “Where the legal dispute on this started was when we decolonised [in 1968].”
Government policy is following UN recommendations too. A 2019 General Assembly resolution in the United Nations went against Britain and in favour of Mauritius which said the former colony should have sovereignty of the Chagos Islands “within six months.” Last year the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination pointed out its concerns on the lack of rights for Chagossians to have self-determination and recommended that they should be involved in the “decision-making processes.”
That said, the deal can’t just be terminated with no other solution in its place. Britain and the US know something has to change. They can ignore a UN resolution (Trump described the institution this week as providing “empty words” and an “embarassment.”) An advisory International Court of Justice (ICJ) opinion doesn’t have to be acted upon either. What propels the two allies to solve this debacle are other geopolitical considerations: India and Africa are promoting anti-colonialisation across the whole Indian Ocean rim states and Africa and, China is increasing its ties with Mauritius, Seychelles and other territories in the region.
Given the furore of competing political interests and the suggestion that the decisions of various international institutions are the same if not more important than those of elected governments, as I said on GB News this year, it wouldn’t surprise me if Trump carved out Diego Garcia from the deal and made it US sovereign territory. This would leave the rest of the Chagos Islands to become the sovereign territory of Mauritius. Or some other similar hybrid solution. See the US administration’s new Greenland deal laughed at a year ago and made to happen now. A telling comment not picked up, is that in the UN press conference this week President Trump recalled that on meeting PM Andy Burnham privately, "I said, well we could get something else." What could that “something else” be?
While US, UK and Mauritius civil servants argue the geo-political issues in their chaotic international, flip-flopping treaty-making (or unmaking) discussions behind closed doors, little is mentioned about the Chagossian people. The headlines are all about national security, real estate, and pay-offs.
So what of Chagossian people’s democratic rights? The Mauritian government, bigging up the deal they signed with the UK on 22 May 2025, praised it this week saying, “it will bring this painful chapter for the Chagossians to a close.” What they never mention is how most British-based (and at least two Mauritian-based) Chagossian groups oppose Mauritius controlling the islands. After years of poverty and discrimination in Mauritius, many don’t trust the ruling elites in Britain’s former colony to allow them a right of abode on the islands. So strong is the mistrust several hundred Chagossians and their families have moved to Britain in the last few years.
This week, as the Conservative Post report, 31 Chagossian families arrived in Manchester Airport from Mauritius. You would thinl given the territorial giveaway of British territory that they – or their family members – were born in, that newly arrived Chagossian people would be received by the British authorities and offered new, secure housing immediately and help. Quite the opposite. Barrister Kareesha Turner who is helping Chagossians in Mauritius and the UK says, “Many Chagossian families [coming to the UK] have difficulty accessing the documents ordinarily expected of them because of the circumstances in which they and their families were removed from the Chagos Islands from the 1960s onwards. They should not now be disadvantaged because they cannot produce documents which, through no fault of their own, may never have been available to them.”
It’s only by raising the issue politically that the democratic rights of Chagossian people – including the six Chagossians already living on the islands since last February – and British people will count.
THE CHAGOS FILES’ work aims to bring to light the undemocratic aspects of the Chagos issue, what it means for Chagossian people and all of us. Please support us financially to continue this work by clicking support. Thank you.
THE CHAGOS FILES team
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Tessa Clarke, Editor, THE CHAGOS FILES
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