How Badenoch’s meeting with Mike Johnson led to Trump’s Chagos deal rant

Brief encounter set off chain of events ending with a public rebuff to the US president from Keir Starmer

When Kemi Badenoch met Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, on Monday evening, she pressed him on two issues: the Chagos Islands deal and North Sea oil drilling.

Neither participant was part of their respective executive branch, and neither issue was at the centre of the crisis that has engulfed transatlantic politics. But before long, the meeting had some very real political consequences.