The top secret island that could become first battleground between Trump and Starmer
The incoming Trump administration in the US could be preparing to lock horns with the Labour government over the Chagos Islands, Nigel Farage has claimed.
Last month, Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced control of the islands would be handed over from the UK to Mauritius.
Under the terms of the deal, the UK-US military presence on the island of Diego Garcia would be allowed to continue for another 99 years with an option to renew at that point.
But the agreement came under sharp criticism from Conservative and Reform MPs, who argued it weakened British interests on a global scale and handed a victory to China.
Farage told the House of Commons yesterday that the Chagos deal – which was welcomed by the Biden administration – would be met with ‘outright hostility’ when Donald Trump takes over the presidency in January.
He said: ‘Diego Garcia was described to me by a senior Trump adviser as the most important island on the planet, as far as America was concerned.’
The Reform leader also referenced a letter on the subject written by Mike Waltz, who has been tapped as Trump’s new national security advisor, in 2022.
In the letter, sent to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, Waltz argues that ‘ceding control of the Chagos to Mauritius could deliver the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] an enormous strategic win’.
Why have the Chagos Islands been handed to Mauritius?
For a tiny group of atolls comprising just over 20 square miles of land in the Indian Ocean, the Chagos Islands have a long and contentious history.
The first inhabitants were slaves brought over by the French in the 18th century, and the territory was handed over by France to the British as part of Mauritius in 1814.
From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, the Chagossians were forced to leave their homes to make way for a US military base on the island of Diego Garcia.
Since then, there have been several court battles between former residents of the archipelago and the British government, who refused to let them return.
While Mauritius has never controlled the Chagos Islands as a sovereign state - it only gained independence in 1968, when the UK kept control of the atolls - the country has claimed them as its territory.
Despite anger from the Conservatives over yesterday's announcement, the negotiations to hand Mauritius control of the islands began while the Tories were in government.
But it's unclear who precisely started the process after former PMs and foreign secretaries pointed their fingers at each other.
James Cleverly criticised the deal as 'weak, weak, weak' yesterday, before it emerged he had initiated talks when he led the Foreign Office.
However, his team placed the blame at the feet of Liz Truss, saying she had asked him to begin negotiations during her brief spell as Prime Minister.
But Truss's spokesman fired back by accusing then-PM Boris Johnson of telling her to raise the issue with the Mauritian leader at COP26 while she was foreign secretary, adding she was 'absolutely clear that we would and should never cede the territory'.
Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty said he ‘fundamentally disagree[s]’ with everything Farage said in his statement to MPs.
He added: ‘We’re looking very forward to working with [the Trump administration], and I’m sure that they will be being briefed on the full detail of this deal.
‘And I am confident that the details of this arrangement will allay any concerns.’
Yesterday, the Independent reported that the Trump transition team had requested legal advice from the Pentagon on the Chagos deal.
Sources in the US government told the news site that the president-elect was keen to veto the deal, which is due to be ratified next year, once he takes over from Biden.
The agreement over the islands has also been publicly criticised by Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, and Pete Hegseth, the Fox News presenter who has been tapped as the new Defence Secretary.
If the plans do strain the relationship between the incoming President and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, it would not be the first time there has been tension between the Republican’s team and the Labour Party.
A few days before the US Presidential election, the Trump campaign filed a formal legal complaint against the party, accusing them of ‘blatant foreign interference’ after staff travelled across the Atlantic to campaign for his opponent Kamala Harris.
It is unclear if the complaint will progress any further following Trump’s victory on November 5.
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