The foreign secretary has said it is “right” that the new US administration under Donald Trump is able to review the Chagos Islands deal, which the US president-elect is reportedly critical of.
“It’s right and proper that the new administration is able to consider it”, David Lammy told BBC Radio 4‘s Today programme.
Under the agreement, which is still yet to be signed, the UK would transfer sovereignty over the archipelago to Mauritius but maintain a 99-year lease over Diego Garcia, home to a major UK-US military airbase.
Reform UK leader and Trump ally Nigel Farage has repeatedly claimed that the US president-elect is opposed to the arrangement.
Farage told the House of Commons in November: “There is I can assure you, having been in America last week, knowing also the incoming defence secretary [Pete Hegseth] very well, outright hostility to this deal.”
Farage added: “There is no basis for this agreement to continue where it is, and if you do, you’ll be at conflict with a country without which we would be defenceless.”
Asked on Monday morning whether the UK could abandon the deal, Lammy said: “Let’s step back. The US and the UK have a very important military base on Diego Garcia within the Chagos archipelago. It’s kept the world safe since 1973.
“It’s been under some jeopardy because of potential rulings in the ICJ [International Court of Justice] and the United Nations. That’s why the last government began these negotiations that went eleven rounds. That’s why we’ve continued it.
“The Pentagon, the State Department and the White House under the last administration, pored through this deal. It was an interagency process. [They] said it was a good deal.
“It’s right and proper that the new administration is able to consider it. But having gone through the deal in detail, it’s the right deal to keep the global community safe. And I emphasise the importance of that military base and those assets on Diego Garcia that we’ve been working together with with the United States now for all of my lifetime.”
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Lammy also referred to Trump, who will be sworn in as the 47th US president later on Monday, as “generous” and a man with “incredible grace”.
Questioned over his past criticism of the president-elect, Lammy told the BBC: “The Donald Trump I met was a man who had incredible grace, generosity. [He was] very keen to be a good host, very funny, very, very, very friendly, very warm I have to say about the UK, our royal family, Scotland, his relationship with Scotland, his mother.
“That was the Donald Trump I found.”
Lammy added: “But I do recognise that, I think there was a survey this week, 70 per cent of the world welcome Donald Trump coming to power. 70 per cent of the world, I think, much of [those] worried about authoritarian actors, actually quite like the fact that Donald Trump keeps them guessing.
“And I said, we have to reckon with them. [Trump was] up in African American communities voting for him, up in Latinos, up in young people. We have to reckon with that truth.”
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
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