Chagos deal is not good enough, admits Streeting

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Subscribe now Log in Login icon Follow us on: More from The Telegraph Dominic Penna Senior Political Correspondent. Genevieve Holl-Allen Political Correspondent Published 23 September 2026 9:01am BST Save This feature is available for registered users. Please register or log in to continue RegisterLog in Comment speech bubble icon 1231 Share article Log in or Subscribe Copy link

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Add us as preferred source !Wes Streeting said: 'Objectively, in the absence of support from the Americans, is this deal good enough? No' Wes Streeting said: ‘Objectively, in the absence of support from the Americans, is this deal good enough? No’ Credit: Story Picture Agency/Thomas Krych Dominic Penna Senior Political Correspondent. Genevieve Holl-Allen Political Correspondent Published 23 September 2026 9:01am BST Wes Streeting has admitted that the Chagos Islands deal is not good enough. The Defence Secretary said Britain’s plans to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius had to be revised after Donald Trump declared that the deal was “terrible”. Labour MPs and peers are urging Andy Burnham and Mr Streeting to scrap the agreement entirely after the US president’s intervention. Mr Streeting told Sky News: “Objectively, in the absence of support from the Americans, is this deal good enough? No. It needs to have the support of the Americans.” Under Sir Keir Starmer, Britain signed a deal to hand ownership of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and lease back the UK-US Diego Garcia military base at a cost of £35bn over 99 years. Mr Trump initially approved the Chagos deal but then withdrew his support, calling it an “act of great stupidity”. His change of heart came after Sir Keir refused him permission to use British bases, including Diego Garcia, to bomb Iran in February. Mr Burnham is reviewing the deal after meeting the president on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. He suggested that the Prime Minister should reconsider the “ridiculous” agreement. Asked by The Telegraph about the deal, Mr Trump said: “I don’t support it. I think it’s terrible. It was a terrible deal. Strategically it’s very important... I think the Prime Minister is going to be looking at it.” Mr Burnham nodded and replied: “Yes.” The Telegraph understands that Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, had lobbied the US government over the Chagos deal in the past week, hoping that it would be discussed at Mr Burnham’s meeting with Mr Trump. On Wednesday, Sky asked Mr Streeting whether he believed the Chagos agreement inherited from Sir Keir’s administration was good enough. He replied: “I was a member of the Cabinet that agreed the deal with the government of Mauritius, and I stand by the decision that was taken then. But at the same time, the principle we followed all the way through is that it needs to have the support of the Americans. “We will work together to get to a point where both the governments of Mauritius and the UK but also the Americans can sign up to this, because Diego Garcia is extremely important to the Americans as well as to us and our collective security.” However, Mr Streeting did not go as far as to suggest that Britain could retain sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. Asked whether the archipelago would still be handed over to Mauritius, Mr Streeting said: “That’s not really been in doubt. Where the legal dispute on this started was when we decolonised. “There’s a legal opinion, and it’s a draft opinion for now, but we don’t want to take a risk on such a sensitive defence asset. “Where there is absolute agreement in principle between the Mauritians, us and the Americans, is [that] we can reach a diplomatic agreement that safeguards the base at Diego Garcia, which is absolutely critical for the UK and the US.” In a later interview with the BBC’s Today programme, Mr Streeting said: “This deal as it is currently constituted can’t go ahead with American support, so we have to get to a place where it commands American support as well as the agreement of the government of Mauritius.” The Defence Secretary said Britain would not pay Mauritius £120m a year “at this stage” but sought to downplay the sum as a tiny fraction of the overall defence budget. Mr Burnham’s meeting with Mr Trump on Tuesday was also attended by Jonathan Powell, the No 10 national security adviser originally hired by Sir Keir to negotiate the agreement with Mauritius. !Wes Streeting did not go as far as to suggest that Britain could retain sovereignty over the Chagos Island Wes Streeting did not go as far as to suggest that Britain could retain sovereignty over the Chagos Island Credit: US Navy via AP The disagreement over the Chagos Islands between the two leaders came in what was otherwise a friendly exchange on the margins of the New York summit. In the meeting, Mr Trump complained that American planes had been forced to fly from the US to bomb Iran when the war broke out in February because Sir Keir had initially refused to allow him to use Diego Garcia for offensive strikes. “We had to send the B-2 bombers back home to Missouri. As opposed to flying for a short period of time, they’d fly for a long period of time,” he said. Despite Mr Trump’s long-standing opposition to the deal, Mr Burnham told the Mauritian prime minister on Monday that he would do “everything possible” to ensure that it would take effect. A series of Mauritian legal challenges over the sovereignty of the islands were accepted by the International Court of Justice in 2019. Sir Keir then signed a deal to hand over sovereignty over the islands to Mauritius, while allowing Britain to control Diego Garcia, which the UK and the US have used for bombing runs to the Middle East. !Plane taking off from Diego Garcia Donald Trump has complained that the UK did not allow him to use the Diego Garcia military base to bomb Iran Credit: AFP via Getty Images/US department of defence Lord Kinnock said the Prime Minister was “right to review” the Chagos Islands deal. The former Labour leader, whom Mr Burnham cited as an inspiration, said the Prime Minister was rightly “moving away” from Sir Keir’s position on the agreement. He told Sky News that, for Sir Keir, the Chagos Islands deal had been “concluded” and “done in good conscience, and with the settlement, he thought, of a potentially further long-lasting dispute”. Referring to Mr Burnham, he said: “Moving away from that and reviewing it as a big piece of foreign policy that relates to an important base in the Indian Ocean and relations with the United States of America, as well as Mauritius, he’s right to review it, and I think that it was exactly the right place to put himself yesterday.” Lord Glasman, the only Labour figure to receive an invitation to Mr Trump’s second inauguration, is leading calls in the Labour Party for Mr Burnham to abandon the deal. The Labour peer and founder of the Blue Labour group told The Telegraph: “I have never understood this deal from the start. It’s an overhang of Hermer’s [the former attorney general] extremist human rights agenda. It is easily dealt with.” Dan Carden, a former shadow minister and another senior Blue Labour figure, told politics.co.uk that scrapping the deal could protect other British overseas territories. “I have been saying it might be an idea to drop this terrible policy because you’re going to get beaten around with it, and then you get the Falklands,” he said. “It will be a domino effect, and we don’t take overseas territories seriously. We need to look at how we actually give the territories a stake in Parliament and a stake in government. “So I hope Andy is capable of doing that, and I have some hope that he will look at the disastrous Chagos deal and drop it, and look to do something different – because he’s got the ability and the capacity to do that.” Recommended No 10 will be pleased... but trouble lies ahead Read more Another MP on the Labour Right told The Telegraph that the deal remained “up in the air”, saying it could not proceed “at any cost”. Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said: “In the space of 24 hours, Andy Burnham managed to have three positions on the Chagos Islands. Rather than these silly contortions, he should just scrap this terrible deal.” James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, said: “If Burnham was really serious about our defence, he would know that this deal should be binned entirely. It is absurd to hand over British sovereign territory, not to mention billions of pounds of hard-pressed taxpayers’ money, to an ally of China.” Join the conversation Show 1231 comments The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our commenting policy. Copy link

The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our commenting policy. Related Topics Chagos Islands, Wes Streeting, Labour Party, Andy Burnham, Mauritius, Donald Trump

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