Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

(Jan 22, 2026 05:26 PM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Donald Trump's latest comments - calling the UK's plans to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius "an act of great stupidity" - mark a major change in position [by Trump].

When Keir Starmer announced the UK had signed the deal on 22 May 2025, Starmer said: "President Trump has welcomed the deal along with other allies, because they see the strategic importance of this base and that we cannot cede the ground to others who would seek to do us harm."
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also welcomed it, and issued a statement saying that Trump had "expressed his support for this monumental achievement".
Rubio said the deal "reflects the enduring strength of the US-UK relationship".

Seems to be conflating two different things there. The Trump admin likes that the UK is bearing the cost to keep the military base, but they only have to pay because they are giving the land to Mauritius.

Good news for Britain, the United States and the whole world!

The Telegraph is reporting that Prime Minister Starmer has pulled the bill to hand over BIOT to Mauritius after it met strong opposition from President Trump.

It was scheduled to be debated today in the House of Lords where it faced significant opposition. Now it's reportedly off the table.



Just watch: the establishment media will try to portray this as a sign of Starmer's and Britain's weakness in the face of Trump's bullying. Despite the fact that it pushes Britain to retain a presence in the Indian Ocean, which by any rational standard makes Britain stronger.

Apparently the UK made a treaty with the US to use that military base, until 2036. And we give them $14 million off of a missile system we sold them, to secure that deal.

(Jan 23, 2026 09:37 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ][...] Just watch: the establishment media will try to portray this as a sign of Starmer's and Britain's weakness in the face of Trump's bullying. Despite the fact that it pushes Britain to retain a presence in the Indian Ocean, which by any rational standard makes Britain stronger.

I'm still astonished that Starmer could be affected by Trump's opinion to such a degree, no matter how that influence is classified. But OTOH, it gives the UK an excuse for going against "international justice", which it didn't have before. The whole reason for surrendering to begin with seemed to be the Western guilt complex and the UK desiring to maintain a sainthood or politically correct status. Now it can redirect the condemning finger pointed at it to Trump. Who knows, maybe Starmer even called Trump up and privately asked him: "Hey, can you help us get out of this ___ with some theatrics, so that we can respectably keep ownership and sovereignty?"

Here's the text of the US-UK treaty of 1966

https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/...nglish.pdf

The very first provision is

(1) The territory shall remain under United Kingdom sovereignty [page 2]

But there's

(11) The United States Government and the United Kingdom Government contemplate that the islands shall remain available to meet the possible defense needs of the two governments for an indefinitely long period. Accordingly, after an initial period of 50 years this agreement shall remain in force for an additional period of twenty years unless, not more than two years before the end of the initial period, either government shall have given notice of termination to the other, in which case this agreement shall terminate two years from the date of such notice. [page 4]

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(Jan 23, 2026 11:01 PM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]The whole reason for surrendering to begin with seemed to be the Western guilt complex and the UK desiring to maintain a sainthood or politically correct status.

GB News presenter Alex Armstrong says

"The Chagos surrender deal is MUCH worse than thought:

1. It states we must: Recognise “the wrongs of the past” and “complete the process of decolonisation”

2. We give Mauritius, a ALLY of CHINA advance warning of any military action out of the base.

They have lost their minds."

Nigel Farage says:

"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?"

The stocky Valkyrie just has not sung yet.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Trump says UK’s Starmer making ‘a big mistake’ with Chagos Islands deal
https://metro.co.uk/2026/02/18/donald-tr...wsnow-feed
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/18...rcia-lease

EXCERPTS: Donald Trump has flip-flopped over whether Sir Keir Starmer should ‘give in to wokeism’ and hand the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius, a day after approving the deal. His defiant message comes as dozens of planes head towards the Middle East with tensions between Iran and the US reaching a breaking point after nuclear talks.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president said Sir Keir would be making ‘a big mistake’ if he proceeded with plans to hand over the islands – which are home to a joint US-UK military base. The plans would see the UK lease the base on Diego Garcia from Mauritius at a cost of £35 billion over the next century.

On Tuesday, the US State Department said it ‘supports the decision of the United Kingdom to proceed with its agreement with Mauritius concerning the Chagos archipelago’. But in his post on Wednesday, Mr Trump said leases were ‘no good’, adding the base could be necessary for a strike on Iran.

He said: ‘Prime Minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100 Year Lease. This land should not be taken away from the UK and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our Great Ally. We will always be ready, willing, and able to fight for the UK, but they have to remain strong in the face of Wokeism, and other problems put before them. Do not give away Diego Garcia.’

[...] He warned in a Truth Social post that Starmer was “losing control of this important Island by claims of entities never known of before”, adding: “In our opinion, they are fictitious in nature.”

The Indian Ocean archipelago became part of British territory in 1814, with the UK detaching it from Mauritius before it gained independence in the 1960s. It then worked with the US to force the islands’ residents to leave, in order to build a military base on Diego Garcia, which it had leased to the US.

Mauritius won its legal battle for sovereignty over the islands in 2019, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) urged the UK to cede control. This was followed by a UN resolution giving the UK six months to hand the islands back. The UK will maintain a 99-year lease of Diego Garcia with an option to extend, which will cost around 100 million pounds ($135m) a year...

The individual who flip-flopped was Keir Starmer, Britain's disaster as a Prime Minister, who reportedly pulled the Chagos Island bill up above, then apparently un-pulled it.

President Trump didn't flip-flop, he just contradicted a position put out by the State Department.

Starmer is still trying to sell Britain's total withdrawal from the Indian Ocean as somehow guaranteeing Diego Garcia's security through a lease-back agreement. He never explains why Diego Garcia is supposedly insecure under British ownership, and how handing it over to Mauritius makes it more secure. Sounds like bullshit to me.

My own guess is that Starmer and his administration are incurably woke. They conceive of the British Indian Ocean territory as a "vestige of colonialism" that must, purely based on moral feelings, be relinquished.

And my own belief is that if Britain relinquishes sovereignty over the territory, the United States should simply annex it and declare it to be US territory for the most pragmatic and realist of reasons - Because it would give us a sovereign base in that increasingly important part of the world. Most of its population is already American as are almost all of the military forces there, so the annexation could be done immediately and bloodlessly. The UN might fulminate and Mauritius wouldn't be happy, but there's nothing that they could do about it.