US action in Venezuela morally right, Badenoch says

The US military action in Venezuela was the right thing to do “morally”, Kemi Badenoch has said.

The Conservative leader told the BBC that while she did not understand the legal basis for Donald Trump’s operation to remove President Nicolás Maduro from the country, he was overseeing a “brutal regime” and she was “glad he’s gone”.

However, she added that the move did “raise serious questions about the rules-based order”.

The UK government has so far avoided criticising the US move or saying whether it breached international law, instead arguing that Maduro was an “illegitimate president”.

However, some Labour MPs and opposition parties including the Liberal Democrats, Green Party and SNP have called on the government to condemn Trump’s actions and brand them illegal.

Badenoch told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the US action was “extraordinary” but she understood why it was taken.

“Where the legal certainty is not yet clear, morally, I do think it was the right thing to do,” she said.

The Tory leader, who spent her childhood in Nigeria before moving back to the UK at the age of 16, added: “I grew up under a military dictatorship, so I know what it’s like to have someone like Maduro in charge.”

However, she said it was right to tell Trump not to intervene in Greenland because “there is a big difference between democratic states” and the “gangster state in Venezuela”.

“What happens in Greenland is up to Denmark and the people of Greenland,” she added.

In recent days Trump has repeated his threats to annex Greenland – a semi-autonomous Danish territory which has a strategic location and is rich in minerals – arguing it is vital for US national security.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer insisted only Greenland and Denmark should decide the territory’s future.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting told BBC Breakfast the UK’s approach to Greenland was different to Venezuela as Denmark was a member of the Nato military alliance and it was not in the UK’s national security interests to question the territory’s future.

Streeting also defended the prime minister’s response to the developments in Venezuela, arguing he was acting in the UK’s national interest, as well as the “best interests of the people of Venezuela”.

“I appreciate there are others who have been more strident and have been more critical of the United States,” he said.

“The prime minister has a different responsibility, and he is choosing his words carefully and wisely to try and influence how events unfold from here on.”

Critics of the government’s approach, including Labour MP Emily Thornberry, who chairs the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, have argued the US action risks emboldening Russia and China and that the UK should be clear the operation breached international law.

In a statement in the House of Commons on Monday evening, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said she had reminded her US counterpart Marco Rubio of his obligations under international law.

However, she reiterated the prime minister’s position that it is for the US to set out the legal basis for its actions.

Venezuela’s left-wing leader and his wife were seized from Caracas on Saturday in an operation by US forces which also saw strikes on military bases in the country.

The pair have been taken to New York where they have been charged with weapon and drug offences, accused of enriching themselves from a violent crime ring smuggling cocaine to the US.

Maduro has long rejected the allegations as a pretext to force him from power and both have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.

Trump has vowed to “run the country” until there is a “proper” transition of power, with Venezuela’s Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez sworn in as interim president.