Donald Trump has criticised the UK government’s decision to hand the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius, saying the deal is part of the reason the US has to take control of Greenland. Listen to Trump100 as you scroll.
Tuesday 20 January 2026 09:00, UK
The UK government has released an official reaction to Donald Trump’s criticism of its deal on the Chagos Islands.
“The UK will never compromise on our national security,” a government spokesperson said.
“We acted because the base on Diego Garcia was under threat after court decisions undermined our position and would have prevented it operating as intended in future.”
They added that the deal “secures the operations of the joint US-UK base on Diego Garcia for generations.
“It has been publicly welcomed by the US, Australia and all other Five Eyes allies, as well as key international partners including India, Japan and South Korea.”
Donald Trump has slammed the UK’s decision to hand the Chagos Island to Mauritius, which includes a formal transfer of Diego Garcia, home to a key US military base.
But what is the deal really about and what does it mean for the UK-US military presence on the archipelago?
Why are the Chagos Islands so controversial?
The islands were a dependency of Mauritius when it was a French colony, but the UK claimed the Chagos Islands as part of Mauritius in the early 19th Century and kept them beyond the country’s independence in 1968.
In the early 1970s, the UK expelled everyone from the archipelago so the US could build a naval support facility on the biggest island, Diego Garcia.
The Chagossians living on the island, and other islands, were removed to Mauritius or the Seychelles.
Why is the Diego Garcia base so important?
It is leased to the US but operates as a joint UK-US base. Since 1971, only military employees have been allowed access.
The UK government said its “strategic location” made it “vital to UK and US power projection in the Indian Ocean and beyond”. It is described as “a unique shared platform” enabling a UK-US military presence “across the Middle East, Indo-Pacific and Africa”.
Sir Keir Starmer has noted that it was used to deploy aircraft to “defeat terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan”.
Why did the UK agree to return the islands?
Mauritius and the UK have been in dispute over the Indian Ocean islands for the past 50 years.
In 2010, Mauritius started legal proceedings against the UK and took it to the International Court of Justice in 2018.
In November 2022, the Tory government started sovereignty negotiations with Mauritius, but halted them a year later after a paper by three academics said transferring the islands would be a “major self-inflected blow”.
The Labour government picked the talks back up and signed a deal to return the island last May.
Starmer said the UK might otherwise have lost the island over Mauritius’s legal claim on the Chagos Islands, which may have allowed hostile countries to set up their own bases or carry out exercises.
The government said the final deal also addressed “wrongs of the past” and demonstrated “the commitment of both parties to support the welfare” of Chagossians.
What is the final deal?
Scott Bessent, the US Treasury secretary, has addressed ongoing fears of a trade war over US-European tensions on Greenland.
“I am confident that the leaders will not escalate and that this will work out in a manner that ends up in a very good place for all,” Bessent told reporters in Davos, where the annual World Economic Forum is kicking off this week.
Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on eight countries not supporting his plans to acquire Greenland, including Denmark and the UK.
European leaders have reportedly considered retaliating by hitting the US with €93bn worth of tariffs or restrict American companies from the bloc’s market.
It’s the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s return to the White House today – and the president’s attack on the UK and repeated threats against Greenland this morning are representative of his America First agenda.
Watch US correspondent Mark Stone‘s analysis of Trump’s second first 365 days…
Donald Trump’s latest comments on the Chagos Island are a reversal of his previous support for the UK’s deal.
Both Trump and his administration supported the signing of the deal between the UK and Mauritius when it took place in May.
Marco Rubio, the US state secretary, said at the time that the US “welcomed the historic agreement” and commended both the UK and Mauritius for their “leadership” and “vision”.
The arrangement to lease the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia was also praised as a securing a “long-term, stable, and effective operation”.
His statement added:
“President Trump expressed his support for this monumental achievement during his meeting with Prime Minister Starmer at the White House.”
It also added that the “milestone reflects the enduring strength of the U.S.-UK relationship”.
Biden ‘applauded’ deal
Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, also supported the deal.
“I applaud the historic agreement and conclusion of the negotiations between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom on the status of the Chagos Archipelago,” he said when the deal was first announced in October 2024.
His secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Washington had “strongly supported” the negotiations and said the outcome was a success.
Donald Trump’s declaration that the UK’s decision to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritus is an act of “GREAT STUPIDITY” won’t change the deal, a senior minister has told Sky News.
Appearing on Mornings With Ridge And Frost, Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, said:
“We’ve done a deal with the Mauritian government. We’ve legislated for the process. We’ve agreed the terms of the treaty, which has been signed.”
“This is the way in which to secure that military base for the next 100 years,” he said.
Jones said the US had previously “welcomed” the deal and that the islands’ complex situation under international law meant the deal was needed to “protect its military capabilities”.
Asked by Sophy Ridge whether the prime minister’s approach of trying to stay close to Trump was working, Jones said: “Keir Starmer’s been criticised for not tweeting or shouting or kind of banging the table and calling the president names, as other world leaders have.
“Actually, the approach that he and the government have taken, serious British diplomatic skill has resulted in the UK being better off than any other country in the world in the face of changes to the American administration.”
Meanwhile, Reform leader Nigel Farage, who is close to Trump, came out in support of the US president, writing on X: “Thank goodness Trump has vetoed the surrender of the Chagos islands.”
Donald Trump’s attack on the UK over the Chagos deal shows “the wheels are truly coming off the transatlantic relationship”, US correspondent Mark Stone reports from Washington DC.
“For the UK, the special relationship is in a really bad way right now”, he says.
This is particularly scathing for Sir Keir Starmer, “who has worked so hard, trying to be the guy who is able to be almost a bridge from Europe to America under Trump”.
Another remarkable aspect is that the UK had made the “controversial decision” in the middle of last year when Trump was already the president – and there was no problem then, Stone notes.
“Yet the vibe and the tone of Trump’s statement read almost as if he’s only just discovered that this is happening, which is extraordinary,” he says.
Watch his full analysis
Donald Trump has also posted a screenshot of a text from Emmanuel Macron on the Signal messaging app.
In the message, the French president told Trump that he did “not understand what you are doing on Greenland”.
He also suggested setting up a G7 meeting in Paris on Thursday and invited the US president for a separate dinner in the French capital that day.
Read the full text below:
The text message is authentic, a source close to Macron confirmed, according to Reuters.
“It demonstrates that the French president defends the same line in public as in private,” the source added.
Donald Trump has lashed out at the UK in his latest Truth Social post.
The US president wrote: “Shockingly, our ‘brilliant’ NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.”
He is referring to the UK’s decision to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which includes the island of Diego Garcia and its UK-US military base.
Under the signed deal, the site of the base will be leased back to the UK for 99 years.
Trump called this a “GREAT STUPIDITY”, which is “another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired”.
Read his full post…
The US president is expected to make an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, tomorrow.
As Donald Trump highlighted in his Truth Social post a while ago, he has agreed to meet “various parties” there.
Business and economics correspondent Paul Kelso is on the ground and has analysed what to expect from the president’s entree as European leaders are fretting over his Greenland threats.
Watch his report in the video…
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