Sir Keir Starmer has shelved his Chagos Islands deal amid worsening relations with Donald Trump after the US failed to formally confirm its approval.
Trump had urged Starmer to scrap the deal despite earlier expressing support for the treaty. In January the president called the plan an “act of total weakness”.
UK government officials have said they are not entirely abandoning the agreement – which would hand sovereignty of the British territory to Mauritius – but have run out of time to pass legislation before Parliament is prorogued in the coming weeks.
However, a new Chagos bill is not expected to feature in the King’s Speech in mid-May.
It is understood the UK has still not received a formal exchange of letters from the US – a legal necessity required for the treaty to be enacted.
The Chagos Islands – officially known as the British Indian Ocean Territory – are located in the Indian Ocean and Britain has controlled them since the early 19th Century.
The deal would see the UK cede sovereignty of the territory to Mauritius, and pay an average cost of £101m ($136m) a year to lease back a joint UK-US military base on the largest island, Diego Garcia.
A government spokesperson said: “Diego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the UK and the US.
“Ensuring its long-term operational security is and will continue to be our priority – it is the entire reason for the deal.
“We continue to believe the agreement is the best way to protect the long-term future of the base, but we have always said we would only proceed with the deal if it has US support. We are continuing to engage with the US and Mauritius.”
The UK had been in the process of passing legislation to enshrine the Chagos deal into law. The bill was in the final stages of its passage, but officials say time has now run out.
Former Foreign Office permanent secretary Lord Simon McDonald told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme that the government had “no other choice”.
“The UK had two objectives, one was to comply with international law, the second was to reinforce the relationship with the United States,” he said.
“When the president of the United States is openly hostile, the government has to rethink, so this agreement, this treaty will go into the deep freeze for the time being.”
Asked whether the government could have made different choices previously, which would have enabled the plan to play out, Lord McDonald said as soon as it went into the International Court of Justice “we were bound by the outcome of this process”.
In 2019, the court gave a non-legally binding opinion that the UK should end its control of the islands “as rapidly as possible”.
“The UK has always defined itself as a country which respects, upholds international law, and I think the government is correct to keep to that traditional policy,” Lord McDonald added. – BBC.
