The British Empire, once a globe-spanning parasite that never saw a coastline it didn’t want to ruin, has finally reached the 'garage sale' phase of its terminal decline. In a move that manages to be simultaneously performative, cowardly, and strategically incoherent, Sir Keir Starmer’s government has decided to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. It is the diplomatic equivalent of a senile grandparent giving away the family silver to a passerby just to prove they still know how to move their arms. Naturally, this has triggered the predictable screeching from the other side of the Atlantic, where the human equivalent of a car alarm, Donald Trump, has emerged from his gilded bunker to label the deal 'great stupidity.' We are currently witnessing a race to the bottom between a decaying kingdom trying to offload its conscience and a former game show host who views global geopolitics through the lens of a failed real estate closing.

Let’s dissect the anatomy of this particular farce. For decades, the UK held onto the Chagos Archipelago with the white-knuckled grip of a thief who forgot why he stole the items in the first place. They expelled the native population in the 1960s and 70s with all the grace of a bouncer clearing a dive bar at 4:00 AM, all to make room for the Americans to build Diego Garcia—a military base that serves as a convenient parking lot for bombers and a shadowy backdrop for the kind of activities that make human rights lawyers wake up screaming. Now, under the guise of 'decolonization,' Starmer is handing sovereignty to Mauritius. But, because the UK’s spine has been replaced by a series of focus-group-tested pipe cleaners, they’ve negotiated a 99-year lease to keep the base. It’s not decolonization; it’s just rebranding the occupation as a long-term rental agreement. It is the height of centrist 'sensibility'—a solution that satisfies absolutely no one and ensures that the injustice remains legally binding for another century.

Enter Donald Trump, a man whose understanding of international law could be written on the back of a ketchup bottle in crayon. Trump’s sudden concern for the Chagos Islands is, of course, entirely untethered from history or ethics. He sees the world as a series of fortresses and golf courses; giving up a rock in the Indian Ocean feels to him like a personal insult to his brand of aggressive idiocy. He calls it 'great stupidity' not because he cares about the Chagos Islanders—whom he likely couldn't find on a map if his life depended on it—but because he views any retreat from imperial posture as a sign of weakness. To Trump, sovereignty is something you buy, sell, or bully out of people. The irony, of course, is that the very 'great stupidity' he decries is the logical conclusion of the transactional, might-makes-right world order he champions. He hates the deal because he didn't get to be the one to mismanage it.

Meanwhile, the British Right is having a collective aneurysm. They speak of 'national security' and 'abandoning our allies' as if the UK hasn't been the United States' obedient lapdog since the end of the Second World War. They are terrified that without these islands, Britain will lose its seat at the table of Great Powers. Newsflash: that seat was sold to a private equity firm years ago. The Chagos Islands were the last dusty relic of a 'Global Britain' fantasy that died the moment the country decided to trade its economic stability for a blue passport and a sense of xenophobic nostalgia. Starmer, for his part, is simply trying to clean up a legal mess that has become an international embarrassment, but he’s doing it with the characteristic lack of courage that defines the modern Left. He wants the moral high ground without actually vacating the premises. It’s a landlord’s version of social justice.

The tragedy here isn't the loss of a few islands or the strategic vulnerability of a base that could probably be rendered obsolete by a well-placed drone. The tragedy is the utter vacuity of the players involved. On one hand, you have the performative progressivism of the UK government, which treats decolonization like a corporate HR exercise. On the other, you have the belligerent ignorance of Trump, who views every diplomatic nuance as a missed opportunity for a brawl. Neither side gives a solitary damn about the actual Chagos Islanders, who have been treated as disposable pawns for sixty years and continue to be treated as such in this new 'deal.'

As we watch the UK slide further into irrelevance and the US prepare to re-embrace a leader who thinks 'diplomacy' is a type of cheese, the Chagos deal stands as a perfect monument to our era. It is a world run by people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing—a place where 'justice' is a 99-year lease and 'strategy' is whatever sounds loudest on a social media platform. We are trapped in a loop of recycled imperial failures and new-age populist tantrums, and the Chagos Islands are just the latest piece of debris floating in the wreckage of our collective intelligence. If this is the best the 'leaders of the free world' can do, perhaps we should just hand the whole planet back to the sea and hope the dolphins have a better grasp of real estate law.