Keir Starmer’s art of the deal

The Telegraph reported this week that the Chagos Islands deal, signed in May 2025, is likely to cost the UK Treasury 10 times the initially quoted £3.4 billion over the next century – a century in which, admittedly, Britain’s continued existence in recognisable form is looking increasingly moot.

Whether or not ceding UK sovereignty over Chagos was necessary, strategically or (if such a word can be uttered with a straight face in such a context) morally, is still disputed. It does, to be fair, appear to have been the Tories’ policy, too – though that will hardly quell doubts considering their other missteps in the Long Slide since December 2019. What is undeniable is that financial legerdemain has been deployed to make leasing back the Diego Garcia military base for 99 years sound less offensive to the taxpayer than it would have otherwise.

And this is only the latest example of Starmer’s woefully inept negotiating capitulations and cover-ups in barely a year of government. A record only thrown into sharper and less forgiving relief by the record over the past eight months of US president Donald Trump.

It has long been a source of amusement, tempered by bewilderment, to the smug British and European establishment that America had elected such a charlatan to its highest office. Perhaps chief among the garish artefacts littering his unaccountable rise – alongside the regularly upgraded wives, the oriental potentate style décor, the appearances on The Apprentice and WWE – was a book called The Art of the Deal.

The title’s implied mastery of the process sounded like a risible boast to the smoothly experienced suits of Whitehall and Brussels. After all, Trump had infamously overseen as many collapses and bankruptcies in his business empire as triumphs. He was regarded as having the unique ability to lose money running casinos, an almost proverbial measure of room-temperature business IQ.

What’s more, while incontrovertibly a bestseller, Trump’s magnum opus – which he has described as his favourite book after the Bible – was in fact ghost-written by journalist Tony Schwartz. It’s a commission he describes as his ‘greatest regret in life, without question’ (though one doubts whether he regrets the royalties).

Well, regardless of whether Trump contributed much raw wisdom to his co-author, or indeed has even read the thing any more than he has the Bible, it is starting to look in his second term as if he has at least some chops in the field of negotiations. More, at least, than the UK prime minister.

Trump’s tariff negotiations have been a wild, at times scary ride. Many investors have lost and won a fortune betting on which way the roller coaster was going to twist and lurch next. But he has come out with many of the commitments he was looking for, however injurious the whole approach may prove to his domestic economy. These ‘beautiful’ tariffs have already collected $150 billion in customs duties, projected to double by year’s end. He has secured reshoring investments from the likes of Hyundai, Merck and Apple that could be worth trillions. And, recently and humiliatingly, he won pledges from Ursula von der Leyen’s EU of up to $600 billion in investment, with much the same coming from Japan. Even if these agreements are non-binding, they suggest a decent night at the tables for the gauche kid with unbridled braggadocio.

Meanwhile, Starmer, though he has not come off the worst of those who have encountered Trump, has somehow managed to be taken to the cleaners by tiny Mauritius. His Chagos deal has not only landed the UK with a painful, long-term financial commitment to continue to use the Diego Garcia military base, which was already ours. He has also surrendered strategic territory to a country aligned with China, potentially compromising UK-US security interests. He has even angered the actual Chagossians, whose homeland has just been handed to another country. It is hard to find anything but abject defeat in this deal.

Closer to home, Starmer’s ‘one-in-one-out’ migrant-exchange deal with France came into force earlier this month. It was supposed to deter illegal crossings in the Channel. But the fact that nearly 1,000 migrants have arrived via small boat since only the beginning of this week suggests they, and the people smugglers, take it about as seriously as the French appear to be doing.

In fact, far from having their dinghies punctured, torpedoed or otherwise restrained, Dover-bound migrants in France are reportedly given free life jackets by the authorities – and no doubt a wheel of brie, a pâté baguette and a bottle of Orangina for the trip. It seems Starmer could do a lot worse than dip into The Donald’s tome, and to brush up on concepts such ‘reciprocal benefits’ and ‘walking away’.

The humiliations have come so thick and fast that many have already forgotten Starmer’s EU ‘reset’ deal, signed back in May. The agreement extended EU fishing access to UK waters until 2038, reversing Brexit’s promise of regained control. It also aligned UK food standards with EU regulations, reintroduced European Court of Justice oversight, and linked UK emissions-trading prices to the EU’s (almost certain to increase the UK’s already exorbitant energy costs). Starmer claimed the deal would add £9 billion to the economy by 2040 – about as credible a figure as the supposed £3 billion cost of the Chagos deal. But even if Starmer’s stab-in-the-dark did prove to be right, it would still be a terrible agreement for one critical reason: it surrenders the very sovereignty we voted, overwhelmingly, to regain.

Even by Starmer’s standards, the India trade agreement seemed staggeringly asymmetrical when it was unveiled a few months ago. Indian citizens got tax breaks and work visas, while the benefits to the UK were unclear, to put it mildly.

Supporters argue that Starmer is navigating complex global dynamics, but the prevailing narrative paints him as a poor dealmaker, living permanently on his back foot. And as Jordan Peterson will tell you, this is a bad place for a lobster to be.

To be fair to Starmer, he inherited a Britain in a mess after 14 years of the least Conservative administration in living memory. Trump, at least, has the advantage of a huge economy, deals that everyone wants to be a part of and the world’s mightiest military.

But that’s the point of the art of the deal. You have to believe that you have a hand worth playing – and make others believe it, too. And Britain, incredibly, still does. Still, incredibly, the world’s sixth-largest economy. Still, incredibly, possessed of more soft power than any comparable nation. Still, incredibly, up for a scrap. What might we achieve if we had a leader with the balls to match his cards?

Simon Evans is a spiked columnist and stand-up comedian. Tickets for his tour, Have We Met?, are on sale here.