Badenoch accuses Farage of trading Chagos for Trump’s silence on the Falklands

British Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called “humiliating” a proposal by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to offer US President Donald Trump the Chagos archipelago in exchange for him to stop talking about the Falklands. “Giving away British territory in return for someone keeping quiet is not a deal. It is humiliating,” she told The Telegraph.

“There is no pride in our country in the way he talks about us. This is careless, loose talk from a man who wants to be responsible for Britain’s national security,” added Badenoch, who said it was “mad for someone who wants to be prime minister to say we should give away one piece of British territory just to stop an American president talking about another”. “The Chagos Islands are British. And the Falklands are British and will remain British, irrespective of what the American president says. When Donald Trump is right, we should say so. When he is wrong, we should have the confidence to tell him.”

On the US podcast The Benny Show, Farage had suggested offering Trump Diego Garcia “in perpetuity” in return for his silence on the Falklands. “I give him something. I ask for something back. He’d get that. He’s a businessman,” he said. A Reform UK spokesman said he was referring to US use of the base, “not the Chagos Islands as a whole”, and noted that Farage has opposed handing the archipelago to Mauritius.

The deal to transfer sovereignty over Chagos to Mauritius while retaining the joint Diego Garcia base was paused in April following opposition from the US administration, although Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he will try to see it through. According to The Telegraph, the White House even considered buying the archipelago as an alternative.

The same newspaper notes that Trump said in August he was reviewing the US position on British sovereignty over the Falklands, amid a dispute over defence spending. Burnham assured him in September in New York that the United Kingdom would defend “the right of the Falkland Islanders to self-determination and to remain British”.