Government rejects claim Chagos deal to cost £18bn amid growing Labour backlash – UK politics live | Politics

The UK government would oppose any plan that would stop Palestinians returning to their home in Gaza, Steve Reed, the environment secretary, said this morning.

In an interview on the Today programme, asked about President Trump’s proposal for a US take-over of Gaza, and the implicit ethnic cleansing of Palestinians who have been living there, Reed stated the government’s opposition to the idea – while at the same time trying to avoid direct criticism of Trump. Reed even praised him for the role he played in securing the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

Reed said:

I think it’s right that I should share with you the UK Government’s view of what should happen.

It would be inappropriate for me to provide a running commentary on what Donald Trump says, or indeed any other world leader.

While we’re talking about Donald Trump, I think he deserves credit for his role in securing this ceasefire in the first place. That was clearly the important staging post towards getting the longer term peace that will want to see.

But … the UK government’s view is, and will remain, that Palestinians must be able to return to their homes and rebuild their shattered lives.

Good morning. PMQs is normally mostly about domestic politics, but today – despite the government doing its best to promote an announcement about a £2.65bn investment in flood defences – foreign policy may well dominate. That is partly because of President Trump, and his desire to leave office with the US territorially bigger than it was when it arrived (something that went out of fashion in most parts of the respectable world around the end of the 19th century).

Last night Keir Starmer had dinner with the prime minister of Denmark, the country that has sovereignty over Greenland, and late last night No 10 put out a statement that slightly firmed up Starmer’s support for Denmark in its determination to see off Trump’s plan to buy/annex the vast, frozen island. More on that soon.

Now it turns out Trump wants to add Gaza to the US property porfolio too. Or something like that. At a press conference in the White House he said he wanted to “take over” the Palestinian territory, but the exact details are hazy and, as ever with Trump, it is quite hard to know where this plan sits on his deadly serious/wild fantasy spectrum. Steve Reed, the environment secretary on broadcast duty this morning, has already politely expressed the UK government’s opposition to the idea, but Starmer is almost certain to be asked about it too.

But at PMQs Kemi Badenoch may well decide to focus on the Chagos Islands – one place that Trump has not decided he wants to conquer for the US, at least not yet. You can imagine, though, why Starmer might be tempted to just hand it over. Britain has sovereignty, as a colonial-era hangover, and is in the process of giving it to Mauritius. Increasingly, the deal is getting mired in controversy.

Last night they were also working late in the Foreign Office on a media statement. Yesterday afternoon, after the Times ran a story, prompted by comments from Navin Ramgoolam, the Mauritian prime minister, in his national assembly, saying the UK was now prepared to hand over around £18bn to Mauritius as part of the deal, No 10 refused to deny the story. The UK is planning to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, because it keeps losing cases in international courts over ownership, but it is planning to pay for the giveaway too so it can carry on running the UK/US airbase on Diego Garcia for another 99 years. There was some government background briefing to the effect that the £18bn figure was not accurate, but the No 10 line left journalists with the impression that the Times story was broadly accurate.

Finally, at 11pm last night, the Foreign Office put out a statement rebutting the Times story a bit more strongly. It also claimed the Times was wrong to say the deal has been revised so that Mauritius will have a veto over any UK request to extend the 99-year Diego Garcia lease which it did not have in the original version of the deal agreed last autumn. A Foreign Office spokesperson said:

This reporting is incorrect.

The figures being quoted are entirely inaccurate and misleading.

There has been no change to the terms of extension in the treaty.

The UK will only sign a deal that is in our national interest.

This will be of some use to Starmer if Badenoch raises the question at PMQs.

But what is much more significant is the news that some senior Labour figures are privately aghast at the deal. In a report for Bloomberg last night, Alex Wickham said that two cabinet ministers are against it. Wickham said:

A person familiar with the views of one cabinet minister said they did not understand why the UK was agreeing to pay large sums of money to Mauritius at a time when the Treasury was telling UK government departments to prepare for spending cuts.

A second person familiar with a different cabinet member’s views said Starmer should cancel the deal. Both suggested Starmer was acting on legal advice from attorney general Richard Hermer.

On the Today programme this morning Henry Zeffman, the BBC’s chief political correspondent, said he was hearing the same thing. He said:

Making calls on this story to contacts in government last night, it became clear to me that some of the most senior people in government are opposed to this deal … Just looking through the words in my notebook, “terrible”, “mad”, “impossible to understand” – those are the words I can use, at least at this time of day on air. But there are other words in my notebook. And these are from very senior government sources.

In their London Playbook briefing for Politico, Sam Blewett and Bethany Dawson say Labour backbenchers are unhappy too.

One MP who fears Nigel Farage’s outfit could be closing in on their marginal seat told Playbook the treaty would be “Reform rocket fuel.” “How am I supposed to tell my constituents that we took away their winter fuel allowance to pay a foreign country to take our sovereign territory?” they messaged to say.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, is due to hold a press conference in Kyiv with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha.

Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

After 12.30pm: Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, is due to give a Commons statement on which English councils are being allowed to delay elections so they can reorganise into unitary authorities.

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