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As Trump calls Chagos deal “terrible,” left and right split on whether Burnham held his own

24 September 202613 views0

Andy Burnham’s first in-person meeting with Donald Trump ended with warm words from the US president and an immediate headache over the future of Britain’s agreement to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

The two leaders met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, with Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell at the table. It was their first face-to-face encounter, though the two had spoken by phone on several occasions since Burnham took office in July. Before leaving for New York, Burnham told reporters he intended to push back against any narrative of British decline, pointing to the UK’s position as the fastest growing economy in the G7.

Trump described Burnham as a natural business mind, said the two men were getting on well, and remarked pointedly that US-UK relations were in a better place than they had been under his predecessor. The warmth did not extend to the Chagos agreement. Asked by a reporter about the deal — under which Britain agreed in late 2024 to cede sovereignty of the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius while retaining a 99-year lease on the Diego Garcia military base — Trump said plainly that he did not support it and considered it a bad outcome. Burnham later confirmed to broadcasters that Britain would work to find a resolution in partnership with Washington. The following morning, Defence Secretary Wes Streeting told the BBC the government was effectively returning to the drawing board on the agreement, adding that Trump’s position had not come as a surprise.

The Chagos deal has a complicated recent history. Agreed under the Starmer government partly in response to a 2019 International Court of Justice ruling that Britain had unlawfully separated the islands from Mauritius during decolonisation, it had been on hold since Trump’s return to office. The Conservative opposition called on Wednesday for the deal to be scrapped entirely.

Left-leaning coverage framed the encounter as testing — presenting Trump’s public criticism as a blow to Burnham despite the personal warmth, and treating his implicit comparison with Starmer as a political dig rather than a compliment. Right-leaning outlets read the same moment differently: Trump’s rejection of the Chagos agreement was cast as a principled defence of strategic sovereignty, with the deal itself characterised as a concession Britain should not have made.