Starmer insists Trump backed Chagos deal as White House officials hold meetings with opponents
Donald Trump’s administration has met with campaigners opposed to Keir Starmer’s Chagos deal, as fears grow that the US president will veto plans to hand the islands to Mauritius.
The prime minister insisted that the president sign the plan to transfer the sovereignty of the islands, where the important US-UK Diego Garcia air base is located, after they are cleared by American intelligence agencies.
But as the Trump administration continues to rethink the proposals, campaigners representing the Chagossian government in exile and other opponents of the deal held meetings on Wednesday with senior Republican senators as well as officials from the State Department and the White House.
Britain’s agreement to hand over the archipelago came after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the islands belonged to Mauritius, although it did not have jurisdiction over Commonwealth territory.
Sir Keir insisted that the only way to retain the air base at Diego Garcia was to hand over the islands to Mauritius and lease the air base back.
But the US president, who had Trump’s backing a year ago, turned on the prime minister last week, calling the deal “an act of great stupidity”.
Administration sources involved in the apparent U-turn said: Independent After Sir Keir opposed plans to take over Greenland, the President said he had asked a senior figure at the Foreign Office to take another look at the deal.
It is understood that when the report was presented to him, he said, “I was lied to.”
The deal also faces a delay in the House of Lords, having previously been rejected by peers once, and the government canceled the vote earlier this week. Due to an agreement signed between the United Kingdom and the United States in 1966 that asserted the United Kingdom’s sovereignty over the archipelago, questions have also arisen about whether the agreement can continue without Trump’s support.
The Chagossian government-in-exile, backed by campaigners in the UK opposed to the deal, is offering to name the main island after President Trump if he vetoes Sir Keir’s deal and allows them to return to the islands under British protectorate, sources say. Independent.
During the flight to China, Sir Keir insisted that despite President Trump’s recent stance, US intelligence agencies had initially “very clearly” supported the takeover agreement following its signature.
The prime minister emphasized that after being reviewed “in detail at an agency level” in the months after entering the White House, the Trump administration “concluded that this was a deal they wanted to support.”
He noted public expressions of support from the US president and his senior team, who praised the deal as a “tremendous achievement” that secures the long-term future of the joint UK-US military base in Diego Garcia.
Mr Trump’s criticism of the deal last week came as transatlantic tensions flared over his ambition to seize control of Greenland, with Sir Keir accusing him of making the comments “with the express purpose of putting pressure” on the UK to drop its objections to its claims to the Arctic island.
Asked if the two had discussed the agreement during their meeting on Saturday, the Prime Minister told reporters traveling with him to China on Wednesday: “Obviously, I have discussed Chagos with Donald Trump several times.
“This issue was brought up with the White House last weekend, over the weekend and earlier this week. As you know, when the Trump administration came in, we took a three-month break to give them time to consider the Chagos agreement, and they did that at the agency level.”
“Once they did that, they made it clear that they supported the deal.”
Sir Keir noted statements by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said in May 2025 that the deal secured “core US national security interests in the region”, and Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio, who said in the same month that Mr Trump “expressed his support for this monumental achievement during his meeting with Prime Minister Starmer at the White House”.
The Labor leader did not address whether Mr Trump understood the deal, saying “this was an institutional review before we came to the conclusion that this was a deal in the US that they wanted to support, they supported it and they did so very clearly”.
The US State Department, National Security Agency and CIA were invited to review the draft agreement “in the most stringent interagency approval process imaginable”, The Times reported, citing a source, adding that they had no objections as long as the US continued to use Diego Garcia.
The delay in the bill to approve the deal, which has passed the House of Lords, came after the Conservatives tabled an amendment calling for a pause to ensure the deal did not breach a 1966 treaty with the US.
Labor blamed the delay on “disruptive change” from its Tory colleagues and said Mr Trump’s remarks had no bearing on the decision. It is not yet clear when the bill will next be debated in the House of Lords.
