Keir Starmer’s Chagos deal threatening UK-US ‘special relationship’ as Donald Trump to give verdict in days

A key aide for Donald Trump has warned the surrender of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius will jeopardise the “special relationship” between the UK and US.

The decision to cede the islands has been described as “haphazard” by former Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie.

It comes as Downing Street is hoping for a friendly start to the relationship between the new Trump regime and Sir Keir Starmer.

Wilkie, who is leading the current transition team within the Pentagon, told the BBC: “I think it was a calamitous decision, I don’t think there was much thought put into it.”

Wilkie added that President Trump considered the move to be “something that could impinge on that special relationship” between the two nations, and that the Diego Garcia military base, on the largest of the Islands, provides “leverage to project power”.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “Given Diego Garcia’s status as a key strategic asset, it is right to discuss the agreement with the new US administration.”

Meanwhile, Conservative former minister Sir Oliver Dowden asked Chancellor Rachel Reeves about how the Government would fund the proposed deal to give up control of the Chagos.

He said: “Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer propose to fund the reported £9 billion bill for the continued use of Diego Garcia to the Mauritians through higher taxes, through more borrowing or through spending cuts?”

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Reeves replied: “We’re in discussions with the new administration in the United States around the future of Diego Garcia and will set out details in the spending review, as you’d expect.”

Foreign Secretary David Lammy said he was confident that the intelligence and military agencies in the US would persuade the new President it was a good agreement.

The UK plans to cede sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius, leasing back the strategically important Diego Garcia base used by the US for 99 years at a reported annual cost of around £90million.

It comes as possible challenges for the UK could be exacerbated if President Trump hikes tariffs to protect American businesses.

Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “We understand there is a genuine analysis in the US that feels that the very big trade deficit in goods that the US has both with the EU and with China, the sense of unfairness that is the root point of – we understand that, we might disagree, but we’ll engage with that.”

He said the US did not have the same trade deficit on manufactured goods with the UK that it does with the EU bloc and China, “so there’s the basis for a conversation” with Washington.

“But it will be a choppy time to be a trade minister, there’s no doubt about that, but our job is to navigate through that…You don’t get to pick the world as you want it to be. You get the world as it is.”

Downing Street has declined to comment on the President’s controversial first acts in office.