Mauritius upbeat as Starmer races to lock Chagos deal with more concessions before Trump returns

As British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is in a race against time to finalise the Chagos Islands deal, Mauritius is upbeat as it appears set to secure concessions.

After the latest round of negotiations, Mauritian negotiator Gavin Glover said on Monday he had not come “empty-handed” from talks.

Glover’s comment has led to speculation whether Starmer has agreed to or is expected to agree to Mauritian demands for more money to conclude the deal.

In a historic announcement in October 2024 , the British and Mauritian governments announced that the United Kingdom would transfer the sovereignty over Chagos Islands, a cluster of some 60 islands around 1,000 kilometres from Indian subcontinent in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius and secure a 99-year lease for the strategic British-UK military base at Diego Garcia, which is the largest island of the archipelago.

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While they did not give the specifics, they said the UK would pay Mauritius annually for the next 99 years for the lease as well as fund infrastructure development in Mauritius via grants. It has since been reported that the lease of Diego Garcia would cost around £90 million a year.

While the deal was negotiated with the previous Mauritian government of Pravind Jugnauth, he lost elections in a landslide defeat weeks later and his successor, incumbent PM Navinchandra Ramgoolam, essentially paused the deal and sought more money from the UK to conclude the deal.

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In comments at Mauritian capital Port Louis, Attorney General Glover said he had a “productive” meeting with the British government in London.

“We had a productive meeting in London and have not come empty-handed from London,” said Glover.

Separately, British and Mauritian governments issued a joint statement saying they had “productive discussions” and made “good progress”.

The joint statement read, “Representatives from Mauritius and the UK held further productive discussions in London this week on the future of the Chagos Archipelago. Good progress has been made and discussions are ongoing to reach an agreement that is in both sides’ interests. Both countries reiterated their commitment to concluding a treaty providing that Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos Archipelago; and that would ensure the long-term, secure and effective operation of the base on Diego Garcia.”

Glover’s comment along with the joint statement suggests that Starmer has made more concessions to Mauritius.

While the specifics of the deal have never been disclosed, The Daily Telegraph has reported that the original amount for the lease of the Diego Garcia island housing the military base was £90 million a year but Mauritius has now demanded £800 million a year for as long as UK wants to keep the base along with billions more in reparations.

Previously, the newspaper had reported that Starmer had proposed to frontload payments of several years in one tranche instead of increasing the overall cost of the deal . While the British government did not give specifics, the Foreign Office told The Daily Mail in response to such reports that “an amount this high has not been considered at any point in negotiations between the UK and Mauritius”.

Starmer is in a race to conclude the deal before Trump takes office on January 20. While he has not said it, Trump is understood to be against the deal and his incoming Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has previously publicly spoken against the deal.

Even as Starmer has proposed to frontload payments of several years to sweeten the deal, The Telegraph has reported that the Mauritius finds the 99-year lease too long and has issue with clause in the deal that allows the UK “to exercise the sovereignty of Mauritius” on the island too restrictive.

The Chagos Islands deal has been slammed as being a strategic blunder. The Diego Garcia military base is a crucial outpost of the West in the Indo-Pacific region to check Chinese military activities. Once the sovereignty of the islands has been surrendered, there is no ironclad assurance that the base would remain with the UK. There are also concerns that once Mauritius has been handed the islands’ sovereignty, the US and UK militaries wouldn’t be able to station nuclear weapons and assets at Diego Garcia as Mauritius is part of a nuclear weapons-free international pact.

Even though the talks with Mauritius began under the previous Conservative party government, the government blocked the deal as long as it was in power.

In her latest statement, Dame Priti Patel, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, has said that the cessation of Chagos Islands would “undermine our national interest and the defence and security of Britain and our allies”

Patel said that the deal not just “leaves us exposed to greater security threats” but is also a financial disaster.

Dubbing the deal “economically illiterate”, Patel said, “At a time when public spending is under serious pressure, they are also signing up to spend billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money leasing back a site that is currently under our sovereignty. And to add insult to injury, they are doing all this in secret, with Labour ministers keep refusing to explain the details to Parliament and the British public. They must urgently come clean on what exactly this surrender is going to cost us.”