In a humiliating climb down, Keir Starmer has reportedly suspended his foolhardy plan to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius until the new Trump administration takes office.

This is welcome news for both the British and American people. This is a ghastly surrender that threatens the long-term future of the crucially important U.S./British military base at Diego Garcia, which is located within the Islands as part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. It would hand Communist China a huge strategic victory—all at the behest of the supranational International Court of Justice, which has declared the U.K.’s administration of the territory as “unlawful.” Significantly, the United States does not recognize the court’s “compulsory jurisdiction.”

Under Labour’s extremely reckless plans, the U.K. will lease Diego Garcia from Mauritius for a period of 99 years, paying at least £90 million pounds a year for the privilege. That is a staggering total figure of roughly £9 billion for the British taxpayer. And there is no guarantee, of course, that Mauritius will actually abide by such an agreement in the next few decades, especially with China’s growing influence in the country.

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Starmer’s Labour Government had up until now attempted to sneak this nefarious deal through in the final days of the lame-duck Biden administration, in the hope that this could be presented as a fait accompli before Donald Trump takes office on January 20. Clearly Starmer now has cold feet and fears the repercussions of moving forward without the blessing of the world’s superpower, which has a direct interest in what happens next to the Chagos Islands.

The British Government is right to be wary of blindsiding the next U.S. president. It would be a monumentally stupid move and would seriously damage the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Having met Donald Trump on several occasions in the White House during his first term as president, I have no doubt he will find this deal absolutely abhorrent. It is an astonishing surrender of British territory to a close ally of China and jeopardizes the future of one of America’s most important military facilities in the world.

Diego Garcia played a key role in the launch of U.S. airstrikes during the Persian Gulf War and in the war to oust the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Today it is vital for countering Chinese influence and aggression in the Indo-Pacific region. 

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Significantly, President-elect Trump’s picks for Secretary of State and National Security Advisor have raised major doubts in the past about the idea of the U.K. handing over the Islands to Mauritius. I expect their concerns are widely shared across the U.S. national security and intelligence community.

I believe that the chances of this deal moving forward with U.S. support post-Biden is zero. Unlike the feckless Biden administration, which has not opposed Starmer on this issue, the new U.S. administration will I am sure block any move to undermine the national security of the United States and/or strengthen the strategic position of Beijing.

My recommendation to President Trump when he returns to the Oval Office is to send this disastrous Chagos deal to the bottom of the Indian Ocean where it belongs. It is a monumentally dangerous folly, and demonstrates a staggering lack of judgement from Keir Starmer, Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and the Labour government on the world stage. They are playing with fire if they seek to push this through in the face of what will be overwhelming opposition from Washington.