John Gustavsson has jumped on the stop-Starmer-from-giving-more-power-to-China bandwagon. He would like the United States to help prevent the UK from giving the Chagos Islands to CCP pal Mauritius (National Review, January 24, 2026).
The Chagos islands are “an archipelago in the Indian Ocean that includes the island Diego Garcia and its joint British/American military base.” To keep the Diego Garcia base in U.S. and British control after the planned handover (a handover opposed to the wishes of the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands), Starmer is willing to commit Britain to forking over oodles of lease money.
Maybe the U.S. can help stop Starmer? President Trump has indicated his disapproval of the turnover. Said the president on Truth Social: “Shockingly, our ‘brilliant’ Nato Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital US Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.”
Technically, the president is incorrect. The UK is currently planning this giveaway FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER. Suicidal gestures have reasons.
Gustavsson begins his article by stating the obvious: “Keir Starmer has made a mess of things.”
In October 2024, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his intention to cede the Chagos Islands—an archipelago in the Indian Ocean that includes the island Diego Garcia and its joint British/American military base—to Mauritius. This move blindsided both his own and other parties, as it had not been discussed in the run-up to the election just three months earlier. Now, the House of Lords has intervened to delay the handover. With President Donald Trump recently having announced his opposition to the deal, the U.S. should now use this delay to stop it altogether.
Under the deal, the U.K. would lease the Diego Garcia base—and not for free. Britain, which under Margaret Thatcher sent most of its surface fleet on a mission 8,000 miles away to retake the Falkland Islands after the Argentinian invasion, is now under Starmer paying for the privilege of giving away territory. In fact, one hang-up that has delayed the deal has been the Mauritians’ repeated demands that Britain pay them more.
How can Mauritius be demanding even more payment in order to condescend to accept an addition to its territory? Here we must resort to the well-tested theory that some people know a sucker when they see one.
While the treaty does not allow Mauritius to lease any nearby island to China, this is hard to prevent in practice. Further, Mauritius is allowed to permit anyone—not just descendants of the islanders expelled during the construction of the base in the 1960s and ’70s—to resettle to any island save Diego Garcia, without British or American vetting. There is thus nothing to prevent Chinese spies from taking up residence nearby.
Under the deal, foreign vessels would be able to sail closer to the islands than now. Although officially this includes only nonmilitary vessels, it is easy to see how China could circumvent this, using civilian vessels for the purpose of spying or interference. At a time when China is flagrantly violating previous agreements with the U.K. over Hong Kong, and possibly preparing to invade Taiwan, ceding the Chagos Islands to Mauritius would be giving China a reward it has not earned and would send a dangerous signal….
Starmer has hailed the agreement as a way to “secure” the Diego Garcia base, claiming that the U.K. and U.S. might otherwise have lost it completely. This is patently absurd. Mauritius does not keep a standing army and could never take the islands by force.
Starmer, however, has been cowed by a nonbinding, advisory UN opinion that Mauritius is the “rightful” owner of the Chagos Islands. Gustavsson argues that Starmer also wants to toss a sop to the most loony-left of his constituency by posing as a heroic agent of decolonialization. Even though betraying the islands wouldn’t be decolonization.
Mauritius has never controlled the Chagos Islands. While they were part of the same British colonial territory, which Britain conquered from France in 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars, they are 1,250 miles apart, and their histories are entirely separate: Most Mauritians are of Indian ethnicity, whereas Chagossians are descendants of African slaves taken to the uninhabited islands. Past arbitrary colonial borders wreak havoc across Africa to this day and certainly should not be used to determine whether one country has a right to another country’s territory. The precedent that this would establish is horrendous….
The left may have a notoriously selective view of who has a right to self-determination, but that does not mean the U.K. or U.S. must abide by it.
Though Prime Minister Starmer is loony-left, he has not been loony enough to satisfy the ultra-loony left (ULL). Throwing the islanders to the wolves and endangering British and U.S. national security in order to appease the UN and ULL, perhaps also China, is not good policy.
Also see:
The Guardian: “Trump cites UK’s ‘stupidity’ over Chagos Islands as reason to take over Greenland”
