While I'm not informed enough to comment on the wider discussion, I find it weird that the article kept listing more and more Americans in the list of opinions being ignored. The article weakened its case by not stopping after the first sentence

Not the opposition of the Chagossian people, evicted by Britain in the 1960s, the majority of whom have made it clear they do not want the islands to fall into Mauritian hands. Not America’s ambassador to the UK, Warren Stephens, who understatedly warned that surrendering the strategically important territory was not the “ideal outcome”. Not the opinion of US senators that No 10’s legal case for secession was “nonsense” fuelled by “a misguided anti-western agenda”. Nor the considered view of the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who told this paper that the deal’s potential to ­strengthen Chinese influence in the region meant it was “one of the dumbest geostrategic mistakes”.