Donald Trump has called the plan to transfer sovereignty ‘stupid’ and linked it to his own push to acquire Greenland
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In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump has described the UK’s plans to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius as “an act of great stupidity”. He claimed that it had made it all the more important for him to take Greenland from Denmark. Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, while critical of Trump over his threats of tariffs on European countries who oppose his territorial land grab, have been quick to lend Conservative and Reform support to the US president in his criticism of the UK-Mauritius treaty, which is now making its way through parliament.
They are an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, located about 5,800 miles south-east of the UK and 1,250 miles north-east of Mauritius. They became British territory along with Mauritius in 1814 as part of the treaty of Paris after the defeat of Napoleon. The group of islands were designated as British Indian Ocean Territory in 1965 and detached from Mauritius, which became independent in 1968. The deal then was that the islands would return to Mauritius once they were no longer needed for Britain’s defence. A joint UK-US military base was built on the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia. Displaced residents were resettled in Mauritius and Seychelles, while some were relocated to the UK in 2002.
