UK Officials Say Time Has Run Out on Agreement, But Not Abandoning It

The legislation underpinning Britain's agreement to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius was dropped from the King's Speech on April 10, leaving the Starmer government in the awkward position of defending a deal it can no longer advance through Parliament. UK officials insisted they had simply run out of parliamentary time, not run out of commitment, but that explanation landed with the credibility of a government trying to save face on two fronts at once.

The legislation to approve the agreement had passed the House of Commons but faced strong opposition in the House of Lords, which approved it while also passing a "motion of regret" lamenting the legislation. With the King's Speech scheduled for May 13 and parliamentary prorogation expected in late April, the window to reconcile those competing positions collapsed.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer pulled the deal to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, home to the pivotal UK-US military base Diego Garcia, after President Donald Trump fiercely opposed it. The UK and Mauritius had signed a preliminary agreement in May 2025, but it still required parliamentary approval, and the United States holds substantial sway over the outcome.

What the deal would have delivered was significant. Under the treaty, the UK would transfer sovereignty over all the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. The treaty, ratified in May 2025, would allow the UK to exercise control over the Diego Garcia base for a period of 99 years, with an option for a further 40-year extension. In exchange, the UK would pay Mauritius an annual average of £101 million for 99 years in 2025-26 prices, totalling around £3.4 billion. For London, the strategic logic was clear: without a negotiated settlement, an adverse international legal ruling could eventually render Diego Garcia inoperable as a joint base.

Trump's intervention scrambled that calculus. Trump had accused the United Kingdom of "stupidity" over the plan to hand over ownership of the islands to Mauritius, writing on Truth Social: "The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY." Ministers were described as "deeply frustrated" with Trump, who had initially supported the deal after extensive discussions between intelligence agencies but changed his mind during a dispute with NATO over plans to seize Greenland.

The government's response to that reversal was a study in contradiction. A government source said Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer had "misspoken" when he told the House of Commons that the UK was "pausing" legislation to ratify the transfer. A government spokesman then stated: "There is no pause. We have never set a deadline." The episode raised the question the "ran out of time" claim now faces: if there was no pause and no deadline, what exactly happened?

The UK government said it would not proceed with the deal without the support of the United States, effectively outsourcing the timeline to an administration that had already declared the deal a mistake. That position has left Mauritius exposed. Mauritius, which was meant to receive the islands on February 1, 2026, has now threatened legal action against the UK over the delay.

The political consequences for Starmer are equally uncomfortable. Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, described the development as "a massive and humiliating defeat" for Starmer, adding that the prime minister had made the agreement "his top foreign policy priority."

Whether the deal can survive into a new parliamentary session depends on a Trump administration that has given no indication it plans to revisit its opposition. The government said it still stands by the deal and will attempt to persuade Trump to change his mind, but has acknowledged it cannot proceed without his backing. For Mauritius, which lined up economic partnerships in anticipation of the transfer, that is not reassurance. It is a holding pattern with no scheduled end.