From the Chagos Islands to ‘windmills’ and sharia law, the US president’s comments do not bear much scrutiny
Donald Trump has been opining about the UK again, saying on Tuesday that Keir Starmer was “not Winston Churchill” and repeating his complaint about the deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Here are some recent things the US president has said about British issues, and how they compare with reality.
The US president has changed his mind over this so many times it has been hard to keep up. It was a good deal, then a bad one. Now it has caused some minor inconvenience to his plans for attacking Iran, he has lashed out – again. There is some slightly mangled truth to what he said: the Chagos Islands deal does give sovereignty to Mauritius in return for a lease on Diego Garcia, the island used for a major UK-US airbase, although this is 99 years rather than 100.
The part about “indigenous people” is more off piste. The Chagos islanders have been exiled since Diego Garcia was forcibly cleared more than 50 years ago to make way for the base. But the deal is the result of fears that failure to secure the future of Diego Garcia with Mauritius could leave the archipelago vulnerable to incursions by China or others.
