Chagos Chaos – Trump Has Rightly Kicked Up a Hornet’s Nest

The backlash this presidential exposion caused yesterday has been tremendous.

President Trump is absolutely right to point out the staggering stupidity of the United Kingdom handing over the strategically vital Chagos Islands to a country more than 1,200 miles away that has no connection to them (and that happens to be a vassal of China), purely as an act… pic.twitter.com/wLD0u3PBGY

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) January 20, 2026

Here was Britain’s Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, angrily defending himself while being called on the carpet by members of Parliament yesterday. Starmer was being mercilessly hounded to ‘scrap his terrible deal’ with the Mauritians, which would hand over the Chagos island chain, including the strategic Indian Ocean military base of Diego Garcia.

Sir Keir Starmer appeared visibly furious as he denounced Donald Trump during Prime Minister’s Questions over his surrender of the Chagos Islands.

Yesterday, the President branded the Prime Minister’s plan to hand the British Indian Ocean Territory, a key military base for Britain and the United States, to Mauritius an “act of stupidity.”

One of the most important of his angry rejoinders…

…But Sir Keir accused Mr Trump of deploying words “different to his previous words of welcome and support when I met him in the White House”.

…went directly to a point I had made and a question I had posed yesterday when I wrote about this.

…Trump says the two of them are going to ‘have some discussions about that deal,’ which sounds like ‘it’s going to be very long-term.’ He was very pleasant and accommodating.

Anyone who has listened to Trump long enough knows why the rest of this statement, though it sounds like an endorsement, should be recognized as a qualified one. The second the president says ‘I THINK and follows up with a ‘inclined to go along,’ whoever the petitioner is should be aware they have been put on notice to be on their best behavior, or that okay will be yanked so fast their heads will spin.

I also wondered, as the PM had very much led the British public and Parliament members down the garden path continually over this deal, with outright lies and manipulated numbers, later proven to be fabrications or purposeful omissions, if he and his representatives had also done the same with Trump and Rubio when they presented the agreement specifics.

What if Starmer and Co. had lied to Trump about something so incredibly important, so vital to American national security? I figured we would never know, but could only imagine such a scenario for the last-minute dramatics out of a formerly quiet White House.

Enter a Nigel Farage op-ed on the controversy that blew my mind this morning, and, if true, was a confirmation of that wholly unthinkable scenario between a British government and our (whoever he might be) president.

The sneks lied to Trump.

I am delighted that President Donald Trump has effectively vetoed the Labour Government’s surrender of the Chagos Islands, site of an important US-UK military base. But why on earth should it take a social media post from the American president to force the UK government to act in our national interests? 

On his Truth Social platform, President Trump torpedoed the shameful deal done by Keir Starmer’s Government as “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY”. It would seem hard for anybody to disagree with that brutal assessment.

…What I learnt this time last year in America was that senior UK governmental figures had gone to Washington DC and given the Trump administration a lot of foreign office hot air. They claimed that Britain simply had no choice but to surrender the sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius, after a ruling by the International Court of Justice. It was little surprise to learn that chief among the smooth snake oil salesmen peddling this phoney line in Washington was Jonathan Powell: Tony Blair’s former chief of staff in Downing Street, now UK national security adviser under Keir Starmer.

Try as I might, it was difficult to make much progress in DC against this wall of disinformation from the UK Government. In May last year, when the UK signed the deal which included granting the UK a 99-year lease on Diego Garcia, US Secretary of State Mario Rubio issued a statement welcoming the “monumental agreement”. 

How things have turned around since I spoke directly to the president on this issue in November. After speaking to others in Washington DC over the past few days, it is clear that they have now realised that the ICJ court judgment cited by Labour was merely advisory, not binding.

Moreover, a key player in that 2019 judgment, the court’s vice-president, was a Chinese judge who just happened to endorse a judgment in line with Chinese foreign policy. She would later back Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So the penny has finally dropped in DC. Which explains why Trump’s explosive message on Truth Social includes the totally true statement, in capital letters: “FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER”.

This is gobsmacking.

LIES

It appears Britain has misled America on the Chagos Island deal, hence Donald Trump is out to stop it. Stamer’s has said Greenland should have self-determination, but the Chagossians can’t.

Under the 1966 UK-US agreement it’s on the basis it “shall remain under UK sovereignty.” pic.twitter.com/feFljfbrj6

— David Atherton (@DaveAtherton20) January 21, 2026

Farage is absolutely dead on point concerning the ICJ judge.

Yep, that’s the Chinese ‘judge’ Xue Hanqin who wrote the ICJ’s non-binding advisory opinion on Chagos. https://t.co/3a1NnhuNMx

— Joe Rich (@joerichlaw) May 22, 2025

Imagine that! A Chinese judge ordering a strategically irreplaceable American base to be handed over to an island chain being cultivated as a satellite under Chinese influence.

What were the odds?

So I tend to give credence to Farage’s version of Starmer’s toadies stretching the truth  vis-à-vis the UK ‘ordered to’ hand over the Chagos chain vice the ‘hey, it’d be nice if you would.’

Labour is in damage control mode, desperately spackling the Flex Seal on the leaks springing like geysers from the keel of their Chagos Deal Boat, while simultaneously squawking, ‘It’s signed! It’s signed! Can’t do anything! It’s signed!’

Downing Street refused to say that the US no longer supports the UK’s Chagos Islands deal after Donald Trump lashed out at the agreement.

Pressed on whether No 10 accepted the pact was dead without US backing, the official said: “As the publicly would rightly expect, we’ve negotiated robust security provisions to protect the UK and the base for decades to come.

“As I said yesterday, our Five Eyes allies support it, and the passage of the Bill continues through Parliament.”

Watching Trump lampoon Starmer at a press conference earlier today has to be cringeworthy for the British government…if they were capable of cringing.

It’s very funny because, on learning of the Chagos proposal, Trump assumes the UK is selling it for money. The notion that the UK might pay Mauritius for the privilege of taking our territory is such an absurd idea that it doesn’t even occur to him. Yet, somehow, that is what we… https://t.co/I45pXKmEfO

— The Little Platoon (@PlatoonPod) January 20, 2026

...The notion that the UK might pay Mauritius for the privilege of taking our territory is such an absurd idea that it doesn’t even occur to him. Yet, somehow, that is what we are doing. 

(The equivalent would be the US giving Guam to the Chinese then paying them $3bn to borrow it back. For no particular reason.)

Who is Starmer working for?

🚨WE NEED TO DISCUSS THE POSSIBILITY THAT THE PRIME MINISTER OF THE UK IS A CHINESE ASSET

“Only a government that’s seriously stupid, or seriously compromised by China, would behave this way”

Chagos
Spy Embassy

Keir Starmer is a traitor pic.twitter.com/7poNVQJA68

— Basil the Great (@BasilTheGreat) January 21, 2026

Who knows at this point? It’s not the UK and it’s definitely not for the safety of the free world.

As Farage says regarding Chagos:

…I sincerely hope that this is the last we hear of the Chagos surrender. After all, when he was foreign secretary a year ago, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy made clear that if the American administration rejected the Chagos deal, it would be dead. “Of course,” Lammy pledged, “they’ve got to be happy with the deal or there is no deal”. And this Labour Government would never go back on its word, would it?

Starmer says the deal’s done and going through.

GAME ON

Beege ADDS: More clarification on the glaring security issues here.

Chagos/Diego Garcia – the letter of the agreement…

Assurances in this agreement are not good enough to preclude interfering or compromising presence of hostile powers access to influence or monitor activities at the critical base at Diego Garcia.

See the agreement here… pic.twitter.com/iq3zt5DxUg

— Brent D. Sadler (@brentdsadler) January 20, 2026

…See the agreement here proposed and under consideration in UK parliament

See the

 Parliamentary review of this proposed agreement here

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