US president says deal, which he previously described as act of ‘great stupidity’, was ‘best’ PM could make

Donald Trump has watered down his criticism of the UK’s plan to hand the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius, saying the deal was the “best” Keir Starmer could make.

The US president had described ceding sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory, which includes the Diego Garcia military base, as an “act of great stupidity” only last month. He also claimed the deal was one of many “national security reasons” why the US should acquire Greenland.

Readers respond to a letter which warned that Mauritius could destroy the islands’ ‘pristine’ tropical ecosystem

There has long been a lobby against returning the Chagos Islands to Mauritius based on tenuous environmental arguments, and Clive Hambler’s letter ( 28 January ) is an example. While the marine ecosystems of the Chagos are relatively pristine, the terrestrial environments are not, as the islands were used as major coconut plantations for a couple of centuries before being forcibly depopulated in the 1970s.

Aside from Diego Garcia, they have been effectively rewilded through neglect, so the vegetation is secondary forest, good but not “virgin”, and does support important seabird colonies. As for the marine environment, the now-displaced islanders fished the waters during those 200 years, also exporting some fish to Mauritius.

Chagossian people would be allowed to fish in area now teeming with life since ban was introduced in 2010

One of the most precious marine reserves in the world, home to sharks, turtles and rare tropical fish, will be opened to some fishing for the first time in 16 years under the UK government’s deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

Allowing non-commercial fishing in the marine protected area (MPA) is seen as an essential part of the Chagossian people’s return to the islands, as the community previously relied on fishing as their main livelihood. But some conservationists have raised the alarm, as nature has thrived in the waters of the Indian Ocean since it was protected from fishing.

Chancellor will reveal how the government plans to spend almost £1.4tn in 2026-27, rising to almost £1.5tr in 2028-29

At Westminster it is assumed that Kemi Badenoch is the party leader most likely to lose her job. But today the Herald is running a story by Andrew Learmonth , its political editor, saying some senior SNP figures would like to replace John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister. Learmonth says:

Senior SNP figures held a secret meeting on Monday night to discuss removing John Swinney as party leader, The Herald has learned, following last week’s defeat in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse byelection.

One of the 25 attendees said the first minister had two weeks to come up with a new strategy on independence — or risk facing a leadership challenge at the SNP conference in October.

Mauritius has said that it is using the revenue it is getting from the UK under the Chagos Islands deal to cut taxes and reduce the national debt. Under the sovereignty transfer agreement, the UK will pay Mauritius £90m a year to rent Diego Garcia, the site of a major military base, for another 99 years. As Tony Diver reports in the Telegraph , Mauritians have been told they will benefit directly.

Navin Ramgoolam, the Mauritian prime minister, has now announced that the money paid by the UK will help Mauritius cut taxes, so that 81 per cent of people in the African island nation will not pay any income tax …

The Mauritian reforms were announced in a budget speech by Mr Ramgoolam on Wednesday, when he said that the UK’s Chagos payments for the next three years would be used to help pay off the country’s national debt, which has reached 90 per cent of GDP.

A panel of experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council has criticised the deal on the grounds that it does not fully respect the rights of Chagossians. In their statement, they say:

By maintaining a foreign military presence of the United Kingdom and the United States on Diego Garcia and preventing the Chagossian people from returning to Diego Garcia, the agreement appears to be at variance with the Chagossians’ right to return, which also hinders their ability to exercise their cultural rights in accessing their ancestral lands from which they were expelled.

We have been warning from the start that this deal is bad for British taxpayers and bad for the Chagossian people.

Now even the United Nations is saying the very same.

No 10 says deal to cede UK’s last African colony now being finalised after months of doubt

Donald Trump has signed off the UK’s handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, Downing Street has indicated, paving the way for the UK to cede sovereignty over its last African colony after a six-month standoff.

Under the terms of the deal, the UK will give up control of the Chagos archipelago while paying to maintain control of a joint US-UK military base on the largest island, Diego Garcia, under a 99-year lease.

Eleni Courea discusses the UK’s historic deal to sign sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, and why some inside the Labour party are now regretting it. Campaigner Olivier Bancoult outlines why he hopes the deal will go ahead

In October last year, the UK and Mauritian governments reached a historic agreement to transfer the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, a series of atolls in the Indian Ocean that have been described as Britain’s last African colony.

It seemed, as political correspondent Eleni Courea describes, a diplomatic triumph for the new Labour government, ending decades of legal dispute over the ownership of the islands. And more than that, it offered Chagossians, after more than 50 years of exile, the prospect of returning home. In the late 1960s, when Britain granted independence to the rest of Mauritius, not only did it insist on carving out the Chagos Islands to keep for itself, but it forcibly displaced more than 1,000 people who lived there.