Starmer's ally slammed as 'absolute fool' by Mike Pompeo in bombshell Trump interview

Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State in the previous Trump administration, hit out at the Chagos deal in a bombshell interview released just hours before the arrival of the US President to the UK. In an interview with The Ross Kempsell Report, he said of National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell: "He's strategically an absolute fool... it is a small group of islands... no one does travel there, but a lot of military power can and will move through there in the event that we need it... you will have Chinese power projection from that place... you do not want Chinese aircraft flying over Europe out of these islands, that's nuts".

Mr Pompeo also called on Sir Keir to scrap the Chagos deal with Mauritius and said he thought the US could still reverse it.

The Birtish government signed a £3.4bn ($4.6bn) deal to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while retaining control of a UK-US military base on Diego Garcia - the largest of the islands.

Sir Keir Starmer said the 99-year agreement to lease back Diego Garcia will cost the UK £101m a year, and is necessary to protect the base from "malign influence".

Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam said the agreement completed "the total process of decolonisation".

The Chagos Islands are located in the Indian Ocean about 5,799 miles (9,332km) south-east of the UK, and about 1,250 miles north-east of Mauritius.

The islands were separated from Mauritius in 1965, when Mauritius was still a British colony. The UK purchased the islands for £3m but Mauritius has argued it was illegally forced to give them away as part of a deal to gain independence from Britain

In the late 1960s, Britain invited the US to build a military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands, forcibly removing thousands of people from their homes in the process.

There has been heavy criticism of the UK government's nrew deal with Mauritius, particularly from the Conservative Party.

Party leader Kemi Badenoch called the deal an "act of national self-harm" at the time.

She added: "It leaves us more exposed to China, and ignores the will of the Chagossian people. And we're paying billions to do so."

Nigel Farage - the Reform UK boss - said the deal was "not necessary" and played "into China's hands".