THE hope that Keir Starmer had ‘got the message’ and was pausing the Bill on Chagos – enthusiastically welcomed by Chagossian leaders – proved to be short-lived.
Starmer says Britain’s transfer of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius will go ahead, despite opposition from the US government, most opposition parties, some Labour backbenchers and some legal scholars.
While Starmer tries to avoid his umpteenth U-turn as Prime Minister, His Majesty’s Government actually has several grounds for repudiating his deal. What follows are the relevant considerations.
First, the Chagossians have not been consulted.
Diego Garcia, the largest island in the group, is where Britain and the US operate a military base. It is in the middle of the Indian Ocean, equidistant from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and due south of India. It is more secure than any other Western base within bombing range of any of these regions. China wants a base there, and Mauritius is its ally. Britain and Mauritius agreed on May 22, 2025, for the UK to transfer sovereignty of the islands.
The islands are sovereign British Indian Ocean Territory. Starmer’s legal argument centres on the non-binding findings of an international court, stacked with allies of China. Neither the court nor Starmer consulted the Chagossians. Without the consultation, I argue, the deal is at least unethical, possibly illegal, under the principle of self-determination.
Most Chagossians appear to prefer British rule over Mauritian. Mauritius, after all, is 1,250 miles from Diego Garcia, never ruled it, and hardly treated Chagossians well.
Today, about 3,500 exiles and descendants live in Britain, concentrated in Crawley, Sussex, where local MPs champion their cause. Four of them led by Misley Mandarin landed on Île du Coin (part of Peros Banhos atoll, about 120 miles from Diego Garcia) on February 17 to establish a settlement and protest the planned transfer.
Although British authorities have ordered them to leave, another British expulsion of Chagossians seems unlikely and the British Indian Ocean Territory Supreme Court has given an international legal justification to let them be. It would further undermine the nonsense of Starmer’s claim to act legally and ethically.
Second, UK parliamentary opposition is strong.
The House of Lords has already suggested a consultative vote among the Chagossians, and more consultation with the US, before advancing the Bill to ratify the deal. Is it possible that the Commons could raise enough opposition to defeat the Bill? Most of the opposition parties have already criticised the deal financially, although not necessarily its legality.
The Liberal Democrats and Greens could easily champion the Chagossians, escaping their internationalist and anti-American instincts. And the Chagossians would welcome opposition champions. They have history with Labour, whose government expelled them by 1973.
Since then, their local MPs have been most often Conservative, and Kemi Badenoch has led her party against the deal. There is a problem here as the Conservative Party would find the repudiation hard, given that plans for the transfer were drafted under Tory governments. Still, Badenoch was not in the Cabinet at the time.
Furthermore, the party that has polled strongest since the general election, Reform UK, is committed to overturning Starmer’s deal. The Chagossians who landed illegally in the island chain this month were accompanied by Adam Holloway, who was the Conservative MP for Gravesham, Kent, before he defected to Reform.
Party leader Nigel Farage flew to the Maldives on February 21, intending to sail to Île du Coin with food and medicine. He posted videos from the Maldives claiming the UK Government had ‘denied entry’ and pressured the Maldives authorities to stop him. The UK Government claimed unawareness of his trip until he posted, and that he held no permit. This incident proves Reform’s commitment to the Chagossians, but it also has been criticised as a useless ‘stunt’. Reform could be criticised for hypocrisy too given that it has absorbed former members of the Conservative Cabinets that administered the drafts that Starmer eventually executed.
It is true that Reform and Conservative parties are insufficient to vote down Starmer’s bill. They would need about a third of Labour MPs to rebel against Labour whips. Labour has a strong majority but a weak leader. Enough backbenchers might be persuaded to vote against the deal, either in solidarity with the Chagossians or just to weaken Starmer further. They have to balance that against the risks of weakening the Government so far that it collapses into an early general election, when most of those same backbenchers would lose their seats.
The best strategy therefore for parliamentary opponents of Starmer’s deal is to do their best to delay the Bill until the end of this Parliament (by 2029) or the end of Starmer’s premiership (which may come sooner) in the hope that a new PM would repudiate the deal.
Third is Starmer’s tenuous position.
The Government could repudiate Starmer’s deal more easily if the Labour Party muscled up and got rid of Starmer as leader. However, a new leader would struggle to escape collective responsibility if he or she had served in Starmer’s Cabinet.
A backbench candidate could more easily ditch the deal. But the Labour Party hardly seems sensible enough to appoint anyone on merit. It seems intent either to double-down on the neo-Blairites already in the Cabinet or to swing ever leftwards. Still, leftists can escape the deal by shouting self-determination for the Chagossians.
Fourth, financial considerations.
The financial liabilities of the deal add economic and moral justifications for renegotiation. The deal promises to pay Mauritius more than £100million per year (£35billion over the next century) as rent for the base. Reducing this liability unites opponents across the parties, even in Labour, which faces electoral annihilation for ruining the economy, if nothing else. Britain’s ministers are concerned, however, that Mauritius would be awarded billions of pounds in compensation if the government cancelled the treaty unilaterally. Given the wokeness of international and British courts, litigating seems a sure thing for plucky little Mauritius, victim of white imperialism (note: no moral equivalency for Chinese imperialism).
Mauritius is hardly motivated to renegotiate, but Britain could link other issues, such as trade or visitor visas. This linkage would be irresistible if Britain earned US co-operation. Without US issue-linkage, renegotiation seems legally tenuous and fiscally ruinous.
William Hague, Foreign Secretary from 2010 to 2014, has stated that Trump is right, the deal was a mistake, and that he would have been ashamed to recommend such a deal to Parliament. Hague makes the additional point that the cost of repatriating and supporting the Chagossians now seems cheap against the cost of transferring their islands to Mauritius. A feasibility study he commissioned in 2014 estimated tens of millions of pounds per year. Although Hague doesn’t extend the following argument, I will: by supporting self-determination, the cost helps to win a moral argument, if not a legal case.
So, clearly, the best way out of this deal is for Britain to align with the pro-British Chagossians to claim legal and ethical grounds for repudiation, and to align with the US government to bring economic and diplomatic pressure on Mauritius to prevent ruinous litigation.
