President Donald Trump tore into the United Kingdom early Tuesday for moving to transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Islands — including Diego Garcia, home to a key U.S.-U.K. military hub — to Mauritius, calling the move “GREAT STUPIDITY.”
Britain and Mauritius signed an agreement in May 2025 that would recognize Mauritian sovereignty over the archipelago while allowing the U.K. to retain rights on Diego Garcia under an initial 99-year arrangement. UK lawmakers are now weighing legislation intended to implement parts of that treaty in domestic law. (RELATED: UK Approves Chinese Super-Embassy In Capital)
“The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, arguing adversaries would read the handover as weakness.
Trump also warned “China and Russia have noticed” the move and used the dispute to revive his claim that “Greenland has to be acquired,” taking a swipe at Denmark and its European allies.
British officials have defended the pact as a way to lock in long-term access to Diego Garcia amid mounting legal and diplomatic pressure over the territory’s status, with Parliament’s research service summarizing the treaty as granting Mauritius “full sovereignty” while preserving U.K. rights on the base for 99 years. The same briefing says the U.K. would make multiyear payments to Mauritius under the deal.
The agreement has drawn backlash from U.K. opposition figures, while Trump’s broadside added fresh political heat as London pushes the implementing bill forward.
The fight over the handover has played out across Westminster, with the government’s Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill formally sponsored by Foreign Secretary David Lammy and, in the Lords, Baroness Chapman of Darlington, according to Parliament’s bills tracker. Labour Defence Secretary John Healey set out the government’s case for the treaty in a Commons statement, while Conservative shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge used the same debate to brand the deal “a total, abject surrender.”
The dispute traces back to the U.K.’s 1965 decision to detach the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius and create the British Indian Ocean Territory, a move that later fueled decades of sovereignty litigation and diplomatic pressure, according to the House of Commons Library.
In 2019, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion finding the U.K. is obliged to end its administration of the archipelago, and the U.N. General Assembly later adopted a resolution demanding Britain withdraw its colonial administration within six months.
