TRUMP FINALLY ACTS ON BRITAIN’S CHAGOS FOLLY

The  Chagos giveaway is coming to its reckoning. At last.

What Sir Keir Starmer once presented as a neat diplomatic housekeeping exercise has turned into a rolling crisis of strategy, law, and political competence.

The Prime Minister’s decision to surrender the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius, while leasing back Diego Garcia, now collides with parliamentary upheaval, American anger, and a growing sense that the government has blundered into a trap of its own making.

Against this misjudgment, a small but determined resistance took shape.

The Great British PAC, chaired by Advance UK’s leader Ben Habib, recognised early that the issue went far beyond post-colonial symbolism.

It treated the proposed transfer as a question of national security and democratic legitimacy.

The PAC funded legal challenges on behalf of Chagossians who had been shut out of negotiations, mobilised public pressure, and forced MPs and peers to examine a deal the government hoped to slide through unchallenged.

Most significantly, the PAC was instrumental in helping organise the formation of a Chagossian government-in-exile, giving displaced islanders a coherent political voice for the first time.

What began as an obscure territorial adjustment became a cause with human faces and constitutional consequences.

The House of Lords proved more awake to those consequences than Downing Street expected.

When the implementing bill arrived, peers subjected it to proper scrutiny and inflicted a series of defeats on the government.

Amendments demanded transparency over the vast sums promised to Mauritius.

Others sought firm guarantees for the rights of Chagossians and clearer parliamentary oversight of future arrangements.

A motion of regret warned that the agreement risked damaging the security relationship with the United States.

The government went under repeatedly.

Although the Lords cannot ultimately block the legislation, they ensured that the Commons would have to confront the issue openly.

Ministers now scramble to reverse those changes and force the bill through before opposition hardens further.

While Westminster argued, international institutions added their own layer of irony.

The United Nations voted against the surrender, citing the expressed will of the Chagossian people and the lack of genuine consultation.

That rebuke is awkward for a government that claimed moral authority from the very same organization.

Speaking to the Great British PAC, Habib noted:

The entire dispute traces back to an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, later endorsed by a UN General Assembly resolution, which asserted that Britain should end its administration of the territory.

Ministers treated that opinion as a binding command. Now the UN itself complains that the proposed settlement ignores the interests of those most affected.

The legal reasoning that created the mess has returned to condemn the solution.

Into this gathering storm stepped President Donald Trump.

He dismissed the transfer as an “act of great stupidity” and warned that allies do not casually give away assets on which American security depends.

His language was undiplomatic, but the substance struck home.

Diego Garcia is not a decorative coral reef.

It is one of the critical military installations of the modern world, and Washington knows it.

The atoll sits at the centre of the Indian Ocean, within reach of the Middle East, East Africa, and South Asia.

From its runways operate surveillance aircraft, naval logistics hubs, and facilities capable of supporting nuclear-armed bombers.

In every major crisis of the past half-century, from the Gulf wars to current tensions with Iran, Diego Garcia has provided the United States and Britain with immediate reach and flexibility.

American troops and equipment stationed there offer options that few other locations can match.

That strategic value depends on clear, unquestioned sovereignty and legal certainty.

Those certainties are precisely what the handover threatens.

Mauritius is a party to the Pelindaba Treaty, which establishes a nuclear-weapon-free zone across Africa.

Diego Garcia has remained outside that framework because it is British territory dedicated to joint defense purposes.

Transfer sovereignty and the exemption becomes murky.

Mauritian officials promise that the base would continue to operate as before, yet treaties evolve and political winds change.

Activists could challenge the presence of nuclear-capable aircraft.

Future governments might reinterpret obligations.

The uncomplicated authority that has protected operations for decades would give way to layers of diplomatic and legal doubt.

Supporters of the deal argue that a 99-year leaseback provides all the security required.

History teaches otherwise. Leases rely on good will and continuity. Sovereignty endures.

The United States built its Indian Ocean posture on the assumption that Britain controlled the territory outright.

Converting that foundation into a complex landlord-tenant arrangement introduces risk at the very moment when the region grows more volatile.

China expands its naval reach. Iran probes for advantage.

The Indian Ocean has returned to the center of global strategy, and Britain proposes to downgrade its position there.

The Labour government’s behavior throughout this affair has been an object lesson in diplomatic frivolity.

Ministers negotiated in secrecy, treated consultation as a nuisance, and assumed that American concerns could be managed with polite assurances.

They portrayed critics as nostalgic imperialists while ignoring the practical arguments of military planners and the emotional claims of Chagossians.

Now they confront parliamentary resistance, organized activism, and a public rebuke from the White House.

Even now there is an opportunity to pause.

The government could reopen discussions to secure stronger guarantees, engage properly with the Chagossian representatives it once brushed aside, and rebuild bipartisan support at home.

Instead it seems determined to bulldoze the bill through the Commons, mistaking procedural victory for strategic wisdom.

Britain advertises itself as a serious country with global responsibilities.

Serious countries do not surrender critical military territory for the sake of diplomatic fashion.

They do not place the legal basis of a nuclear-capable base under a cloud, or gamble with alliances during an international crisis.

The Chagos affair has become a test of whether this government understands the difference between gesture and statecraft.

The reckoning has arrived.

Parliament should heed the warnings from the Lords, from the Great British PAC, from the Chagossian government-in-exile, and even from an abrasive American president.

Sovereignty, once given away, seldom returns.

Diego Garcia deserves more than to be traded for applause at the United Nations.

So does the national interest.

Bepi Pezzulli is a Solicitor in England & Wales and an Avvocato in Italy. A foreign-policy scholar, he is a member of Advance UK’s College as well as a councillor of the Great British PAC.