Donald Trump’s administration has met with campaigners opposed to Keir Starmer’s Chagos deal amid growing fears that the US president will veto plans to hand the islands over to Mauritius.
The prime minister has insisted that the president signed off on the plan to transfer the islands’ sovereignty, which houses the crucial US-UK Diego Garcia airbase, after it had been cleared by American intelligence agencies.
But campaigners representing the Chagossian government in exile and other opponents of the treaty on Wednesday held meetings with senior Republican senators as well as officials from the State Department and White House, as the Trump administration continues to rethink the proposals.
The deal for the UK to hand over the archipelago was struck after an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that the islands belong to Mauritius despite it not having jurisdiction over Commonwealth territories.
Sir Keir has insisted that the only way to protect the airbase on Diego Garcia was to transfer the islands to Mauritius and lease back the airbase.
But having originally had the backing of Mr Trump a year ago, the US president turned on the prime minister last week, describing the deal as “an act of great stupidity”.
Administration sources involved in the apparent U-turn told The Independent that the president had asked a senior figure in the State Department to look again at the deal when Sir Keir opposed his plans to take over Greenland.
When presented with a report, he is understood to have said: “I was lied to.”
The deal also faces a hold-up in the House of Lords, having been rejected once by peers, with the government cancelling a vote earlier this week. Question marks have also arisen over whether the deal can go ahead without Mr Trump’s support because of a 1966 treaty between the UK and the US, which asserts the UK’s sovereignty over the archipelago.
The Chagossian government in exile, backed by campaigners in the UK who oppose the deal, are now offering to name the main island after President Trump if he vetoes Sir Keir’s deal and allows them to return to the islands as a British protectorate, sources told The Independent.
On the flight to China, Sir Keir insisted President Trump initially backed the handover deal “in very clear terms” following sign-off by US intelligence agencies, despite the president’s recent change of tune.
The prime minister stressed the Trump administration “concluded that it was a deal they wanted to support” after it was reviewed “in detail at an agency level” in the months after entering the White House.
He pointed to public expressions of support from the US president and his top team, who praised the deal as a “monumental achievement”, securing the long-term future of the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia.
Mr Trump’s criticism of the deal last week came as transatlantic tensions flared over his ambitions to take control of Greenland, with Sir Keir accusing him then of making the comments with the “express purpose of putting pressure” on the UK to lift its objections to his demands over the Arctic island.
Asked whether the pair had spoken about the deal in their call on Saturday, the prime minister told reporters travelling with him to China on Wednesday: “I’ve obviously discussed Chagos with Donald Trump a number of times.
“It has been raised with the White House at the tail end of last week, over the weekend and into the early part of this week. The position, as you know, is that when the Trump administration came in, we paused for three months to give them time to consider the Chagos deal, which they did at agency level.
“Once they’d done that, they were very clear in the pronouncements about the fact that they supported the deal.”
Sir Keir pointed to statements from US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, who said in May 2025 that the deal secures “key US national security interests in the region”, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said in the same month that Mr Trump had “expressed his support for this monumental achievement during his meeting with prime minister Starmer at the White House”.
The Labour leader would not be drawn on whether Mr Trump understood the deal, reiterating “it was an agency review that was conducted in the US before they then concluded that it was a deal they wanted to support, did support and did so in very clear terms”.
The US State Department, National Security Agency and CIA were all invited to examine the draft deal in “the most rigorous inter-agency approval process imaginable”, The Times reported, citing a source, adding they had no objections as long as the US could continue to use Diego Garcia.
The delay in the bill to approve the deal passing through the House of Lords comes after the Conservatives tabled an amendment calling for a pause to ensure the agreement does not breach a 1966 treaty signed with the US.
Labour blamed the postponement on Tory peers’ “wrecking amendment” and said Mr Trump’s remarks had no bearing on the decision. It is not yet clear what date the bill will next be debated in the Lords.