“We will, of course, have discussions with the administration in the coming days to remind them of the strength of this deal and how it secures the base,” he told MPs.
Starmer’s spokesman told reporters the parliamentary process to enact the Chagos treaty would continue as planned, while Mauritius’ Attorney General Gavin Glover issued a statement stressing that it still expects the transfer to go ahead. Campaigners had long argued that Britain’s custody of the archipelago — including the forcible expulsion of Chagossians to make way for the base in the 1960s — was a hangover from its days as a global empire.
Glover said: “The sovereignty of the Republic of Mauritius over the Chagos Archipelago is already unambiguously recognised by international law and should no longer be subject to debate.”
Gaston argued that it would still be “possible” for Starmer to persuade Trump to resume his backing, but warned that the price of doing so could be helping to find a solution to his standoff with Europe over Greenland — or allowing the president to “save some face” on his heavily-criticized Board of Peace for Gaza.
The row poses wider questions for Starmer too. The British prime minister, a human rights lawyer by profession, has described international law as his “lodestar,” and took considerable domestic flack for sticking to his guns on the Chagos deal.
Callum Miller, foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, urged a tougher approach, telling the House of Commons, “we must show President Trump that his actions have consequences” and “we should take no options off the table” when dealing with him.
But protestations from opposition MPs are unlikely to dissuade Starmer from his settled course of striving for common ground with Trump and raising differences in private.
As one senior Labour MP put it: “It’s presidential trolling. Best not to rise to it.”