{"id":382216,"date":"2026-01-21T12:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T12:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/382216\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T12:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T12:58:08","slug":"i-will-not-yield-to-trumps-pressure-on-greenland-starmer-says-at-pmqs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/382216\/","title":{"rendered":"I will not yield to Trump&#8217;s pressure on Greenland, Starmer says at PMQs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why does the UK have control of the Chagos Islands and why has it reached this deal?published at 12:18 GMT<\/p>\n<p>12:18 GMT<\/p>\n<p>      <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A map of the Chagos Islands shows how far away it is from the UK\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5731bf8f-b426-4ca4-a3f1-2240a5c09079.png.webp.webp\"  width=\"800\" height=\"586\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">We&#8217;ve been hearing a lot about the Chagos Islands deal at PMQs today &#8211; here&#8217;s a reminder of the details of that deal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last year, the UK struck a deal to return sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius, after a UN court ruled in 2019 that the UK&#8217;s administration of Chagos is wrong and should be given up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The islands were separated from Mauritius in 1965, when Mauritius was still a British colony. Britain purchased the islands for \u00a33m but Mauritius has argued that it was illegally forced to give them away as part of a deal to gain independence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The UK reached an agreement that would see Britain retain control of a UK-US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island in the territory and a key position in the Indian Ocean. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A government spokesperson said on Tuesday that ministers had acted &#8220;because the base on Diego Garcia was under threat after court decisions undermined our position and would have prevented it operating as intended in future&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why does the UK have control of the Chagos Islands and why has it reached this deal?published at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-382216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}