‘Better late than never.’ That’s how Reform party leader Nigel Farage has described Donald Trump’s sudden and dramatic repudiation of the United Kingdom’s Chagos handover. ‘This should be enough to sink just about the worst deal in history.’
Early this morning, Trump used his Truth Social account to lay into ‘our “brilliant” Nato ally, the United Kingdom’, over Keir Starmer’s decision to ‘give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital military base, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.’ But what’s striking about Trump’s sudden focus on the future of Diego Garcia is that he’s decided to do it now – amid the high-level row over the future of Greenland and almost exactly a year since he appeared to green-light the move, standing alongside Keir Starmer in the White House.
Farage blames Keir Starmer’s National Security Adviser for ‘deliberately lying to our closest ally’
Back in February, despite numerous entreaties from Trumpworld figures, including Farage, and statements of concern over Chagos from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former national security adviser Mike Waltz, Trump opted to accept the British government’s line on Chagos – that the US/UK military base on Diego Garcia would be protected under the lease terms of the deal. ‘I’m inclined to go along with your country,’ Trump told reporters. He added that he had a feeling ‘it was going to work out very well’.
Farage, a persistent and highly vocal critic of the deal, has spent a large amount of energy trying to trying to convince US officialdom to block it. He tells me he spoke about it directly with Trump when visiting Mar-a-Lago in November and again yesterday with Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson, who is in London this week.
‘I have spoken to every senior member of this administration on this issue, face to face,’ he says. ‘What I got back last Spring was “well look, we’ve been told that there is no option, that we have to surrender sovereignty and line that was this deal is the best of a bad job”.’
Farage blames Jonathan Powell, Keir Starmer’s National Security Adviser, and others for ‘deliberately lying to our closest ally’ about the reality of the Chagos agreement. ‘I don’t know quite how the Foreign Office does it,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how Jonathan Powell does it – but they’re just very, very good at lying.’
Once the Foreign Office ‘narrative had set in DC’, he added, ‘it was very hard for me to fight it. … The Americans just shrugged their shoulders. They’ve been so busy with everything else. But I think, now, they’ve had a fresh look at it and thought, “hang on”.
Farage insisted that the legal verdict on Chagos was only ever an ‘advisory judgement from a highly politicised court’ – the International Court of Justice – and that it was not too late for the handover to be undone. ‘It’s not law. It hasn’t passed in parliament. The treaty’s not been signed. It’s totally reversible – and this to me sinks it below the water.’
The Reform leader will travel to Davos tomorrow, where Trump will be. He’ll speak at the ‘USA house’, the official venue for the US delegation at the World Economic Forum.
Of course, the latest Chagos twist comes amid the more immediate drama of Trump’s threats to annex Greenland and his imposition of stiff tariffs on several European nations and the UK until, as he puts it, a deal is reached for the ‘Complete and Total purchase of Greenland’.
For now, we’re in the private-correspondence revealing phase of the Nato relationships saga. Yesterday, Trump’s message to the Norwegian prime minister about not receiving the Nobel prize was leaked to the press. Today, just after publishing his explosive statement about Diego Garcia, Trump posted screenshots of texts from Emmanuel Macron and Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte, who both praised the US Commander-in-Chief for his handling of the latest ceasefire in Syria while appealing for what Rutte called ‘a way forward’ on Greenland.
With so much going on, quite how Chagos fits into the geopolitical picture remains to be seen.
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