Chagos Payments Paused: Deal 'Can't Go Ahead Without American Support'
Twenty-four hours after Mr Trump called the treaty “terrible” to the Prime Minister’s face, the Defence Secretary confirmed the handover is being reworked and the money has stopped. Wes Streeting said payments worth at least £120m a year will not be made “at this stage”, and that the agreement “as it is currently constituted, can’t go ahead without American support”. Britain signed in May last year to cede sovereignty to Mauritius and lease back Diego Garcia for 99 years.
The review is real but the objective has narrowed: not whether to cede sovereignty, which Mr Streeting said had not been in doubt since decolonisation, but how to redraft terms a president who dislikes them will sign. That leaves Mauritius holding a treaty Britain has stopped paying for, and no obvious incentive to reopen it. The legal driver has not gone away either: every prime minister since Boris Johnson has judged that the unresolved claim over the 1965 detachment threatens the base’s security. The Conservatives now call the deal dead. Watch for Port Louis’s response, and a Commons statement when the House returns on 12 October.