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Starmer signs deal to hand over UK control of Chagos Islands to Mauritius
- In 2025, Britain and Mauritius agreed on a transfer of sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, excluding Diego Garcia, which would remain under British control.
- The agreement followed decades of dispute, including a 1965 British separation of the islands, the forced eviction of up to 2,000 Chagossians, and stalled negotiations due to changes in Mauritius' government and U.S. approval delays.
- Diego Garcia, which hosts a significant U.S. naval and bomber base staffed by roughly 2,500 primarily American personnel, serves as a crucial hub for military activities in the Middle East and beyond, and will remain governed by the United Kingdom for a minimum of 99 years.
- A British High Court judge issued an injunction hours before the scheduled signing, temporarily barring the deal following legal challenges from displaced Chagossian women who argued the handover could hinder their right to return.
- The deal's pause keeps Britain in colonial control, drawing criticism from Chagossians and the U.N., while the U.K. government plans an annual £90 million payment to Mauritius for the Diego Garcia base lease and ongoing geopolitical tensions remain.
226 Articles
226 Articles
UK agrees handover of Chagos Islands to Mauritius to protect key US Diego Garcia base
Britain separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius in 1965 before it became independent in 1968. A leaked internal Foreign Office memo notoriously belittled the Chagossians as “a few Tarzans and Man Fridays”.
Political opinion with Cllr Duncan Crow: My disgust at Labour's Chagos Islands deal
I am disgusted at the Labour Government’s disgraceful signing over of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Make no mistake, this is the worst foreign policy decision of the last fifty years and will have serious consequences in the years and decades ahead.
Britain returns Chagos, but shadow of nuclear ambiguity over Diego Garcia remains
As Britain hands the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius, the continued exclusion of Diego Garcia from resettlement and scrutiny raises alarms. Despite Mauritius’s commitments under the Pelindaba Treaty establishing an African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, U.S. control of the base may violate the treaty.
The Surrender of Diego Garcia
This week’s surrender of the Chagos Islands, including the strategically vital air base of Diego Garcia, to the Chinese client state Mauritius, was an appalling betrayal. Although Sir Keir ‘von’ Starmer, the pro-EU, anti-British Prime Minister, no offense intended, is denying it, it now appears that every air strike launched from Diego Garcia will have
It is flight forward, not insight into colonial injustice. Britain's agreement with Mauritius is simply a geostrategic deal to secure its own interests – another act of neo-colonialism.
Starmer’s Chagos deal risks his life’s work
The events that kick off Thucydides’ history of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War might seem strikingly familiar to a modern reader. After inconclusive opening skirmishes over a distant territorial dispute between Corinth and Corcyra (modern Corfu), both sides come to Athens, one of the two superpowers of the Greek world, to plead their case. The Corcyrans want Athenian aid in resisting their more powerful mother city of Corinth; the Corinthi
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