The UK is “not entirely clear” what it means for the US to be in charge of Venezuela, the chief secretary to the prime minister has said, urging a move towards a peaceful transition of power.
Darren Jones said the UK would wait to determine whether there had been a breach of international law after the US attacked the Venezuelan capital and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife on Saturday.
Trump told a press conference on Saturday in Florida that the US would run the country until it could do a “safe, proper and judicious transition”.
Asked on Sky News if that was tantamount to colonialism, Jones said the UK was “not in favour of colonialism and we’re not entirely clear yet what President Trump meant by those comments”.
He said the UK would not weigh in on what should happen to the government of Venezuela, but said that it should “move quickly” towards a transition of power that reflected the will of the country’s people.
“It’s for the Americans now and for Venezuela to set out what happens in the coming days,” he said.
“I think the important thing now … is that we are quickly able to get to a point where we can get to a peaceful transition to a president in Venezuela that has the support of the people of Venezuela.”
He repeated assurances given by Keir Starmer that the UK had no involvement and was not informed of the plan to strike Venezuela. “So it’s not for us to judge whether it’s been a success or not. That’s for the Americans to speak to.”
On Saturday, Starmer said he wanted to speak to Trump directly before making any judgment on the US’s actions. “I don’t shy away from this. I’ve been a lifelong advocate of international law and the importance of compliance with international law,” he told the BBC.
“But I want to ensure that I’ve got all the facts at my disposal, and we haven’t got that at the moment, and we need to get that before we come to a decision about the consequences in relation to the actions that have been taken.”
Starmer is likely to face an urgent question in the Commons when it returns on Monday. The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, criticised Starmer’s hesitancy on Sunday, saying it would give Trump licence for hostile acts against other sovereign countries.
“First Venezuela, next Greenland?” he posted on X in response to a post from the wife of Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, that showed the American flag superimposed on Greenland with the word “SOON”.
“You don’t suck up to bullies like Trump, he will just see it as a sign of weakness. Keir Starmer needs to get on the phone to our European allies including the Danish PM, and show a united front against Trump’s threats.”
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, called Katie Miller’s post “disrespectful”, while Denmark’s ambassador to the US, Jesper Møller Sørensen, said “we expect full respect for the territorial integrity” of Denmark.
Philippe Sands KC, a human rights lawyer who has known Starmer for several decades, said it was clear the action was “manifestly illegal under international law, and cannot plausibly or by any reasonable standard be characterised as a law enforcement action”.
Sands said Starmer’s failure to condemn the action “speaks volumes”. “Having lived through the catastrophe and criminality of the Iraq war in 2003, which Mr Trump himself has condemned, I would hope that Keir Starmer sticks to the principles of legality to which he says he is so firmly committed,” he said.
The deputy leader of Reform UK defended Trump’s actions and said it was not comparable to Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine and attempt to capture Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Richard Tice said: “It’s clearly in accordance with US domestic law. Lawyers will argue, of course, about UN article 51. The reality is that an enemy of the west has been removed. The challenge now … is to ensure that you don’t end up with a vacuum that slides into what happened in Iraq and Libya; that’s the key challenge.”
He said the comparisons with Russia “are chalk and cheese; there is no comparison whatsoever”, and “Putin has never said he was going to give Ukraine back to the Ukrainians … He wanted to invade the whole of Ukraine and to keep it.”
Tice added: “The US constitution gives the right to the commander-in-chief, the US president, to act in the self-defence of US citizens.”
The shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, said it was clear that Maduro did not have a mandate to remain in power and that there were “political questions about what that pathway to democracy is going to be for Venezuela”.
