The Sunday Edition: The Chagos Islands deal that could threaten the special relationship
The Story
[email protected]
4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode was originally published in February.
Having ruled the Chagos Islands since the 1800s, the UK now wants to cede sovereignty of the tiny archipelago in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. But one island is home to a secretive US military base and, with the growing threat of Chinese influence in the region, America is worried. Yesterday, the Mauritian PM said Sir Keir Starmer intends to “push ahead” with his deal - Whitehall suggested the same. But if it does happen, might it risk the relationship between Donald Trump and the British Prime Minister?
This podcast was brought to you thanks to the support of readers of The Times and The Sunday Times. Subscribe today: http://thetimes.com/thestory
Guest: George Grylls, Defence Correspondent, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Olivia Case.
Further reading: Trump’s secretary of state warns UK of China’s ‘malign influence.’
Further listening: Bannon vs Musk: The battle for the soul of Donald Trump.
Clips: The Times and The Sunday Times, Reuters, parliamentlive.tv, The Guardian, Reuters.
Photo: Getty Images.
Get in touch: [email protected]
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | When Gareth was 14, he was in a relationship with an attractive young teacher at his school, |
| 0:06.0 | and he thought he was the luckiest boy in the world. |
| 0:09.0 | But when she walked out of his life, everything started to unravel. |
| 0:13.0 | 35 years later, everyone's acting like it never happened, and Gareth wants to understand why. |
| 0:20.0 | How about the truth? How about we do that first, and then we work out where we're going to go understand why. How about the truth? How about we do that first |
| 0:22.4 | and then we work out where we're going to go from there? How about the truth? This new four-part |
| 0:26.9 | series is about who gets to be a perpetrator and a victim. To listen, just search for Lucky Boy |
| 0:33.4 | wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:51.4 | Hi there. This is Terran Siegel, a producer on the story. |
| 0:58.3 | So every weekend, we read the story archives for an episode you might have missed that we think you'd love. |
| 1:10.7 | Last Tuesday, after months of back and forth, it was announced that the UK is officially on track to cede the sovereignty of the Cheagos Islands to Mauritius. So why was this transfer |
| 1:13.0 | contentious in the first place? What are the terms? And what are the Chego's Islands? If you need |
| 1:20.0 | catching up, take a listen to this episode we did back in February, where we covered it all. Enjoy. |
| 1:37.3 | From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 1:38.8 | I'm Manvine Rana. Deep in the Indian Ocean |
| 1:49.3 | lies a cluster of little Paradise Islands |
| 1:52.2 | that wouldn't look amiss in a James Bond film. |
| 2:00.2 | Imagine those kind of tropical islands from Robinson Crusoe or Treasure Island, you know, sand, coconut, azure seas and palm trees and all the rest of it, that is it. |
| 2:13.0 | And if you think of the Indian Ocean as kind of bounded by India, Africa and Australia, it's almost slap-bang in the middle. |
| 2:20.4 | It is as remote as you can get. |
| 2:23.2 | It's a total paradise. |
| 2:26.9 | You have these massive coconut crabs, I think, which is the largest arthropods. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from [email protected], and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of [email protected] and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.