🔗 Share this article

Good morning. Prior to the holidays, the Labour leader had planned to use the first week back after the holiday recess to focus on ministers' efforts to reduce the living expenses. He set out this argument yesterday in a piece where he referenced measures including plans to cut energy bills. However, his cost of living PR blitz has been blown out of the news agenda by the former US president, and his distinct approach to ensuring his voters receive cheap energy.

No one in British political life appears very keen on embracing the Trump approach – which is probably a positive development for other nations.

But there is an intense debate under way about what the UK government should be willing to say about Trump’s decision to abduct the Venezuelan president, and replace him with someone anticipated to be more compliant with American interests, especially in regarding the country’s oil industry.

Keir Starmer has declined to criticise the American intervention, and the government has dodged questions about whether or not it viewed what happened as legal. Recently, all EU states apart from Hungary issued a collective declaration which, while not overtly critical, did stress the importance of global rules, and by implication suggest Trump of disregarding it. It said:

The European Union call for restraint and caution by all parties, to avoid a worsening and to secure a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

The EU reiterates that, under any conditions, the tenets of international law and the UN Charter must be respected. Members of the United Nations Security Council have a particular responsibility to defend those principles, as a pillar of the global security framework.

Mike Tapp, was conducting an interview round this morning and, when asked if Starmer was refusing to say the Maduro extradition violated global statutes because he was worried of antagonising Trump, Tapp replied:

Not at all. The British government are and will remain in conversations with the Americans. And it’s for the Americans to explain the juridical rationale for the action that they’ve taken. And we’re also talking with close allies examining the juridical dimension of this.

But recently, in an interview on the BBC, the chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee (and a former shadow attorney general), said she was deeply worried about the way Trump seems to think, like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the Chinese president, that he could do what he wanted in his area of control.

Questioned about Starmer declining to say that Trump was in violation of international law, Thornberry said, because the PM was in government, he had to balance “a number of considerations”. But she was in a different position because she was not a minister, she said. She added:

Ultimately there is no getting away from it. This is not a legal action.

[Starmer] may well want to hear what the justification is from the US administration. I can state before us and say I cannot think of anything that could be a valid excuse.

Here is the schedule for the day.

10am: John Swinney, gives a address in Glasgow. The Scottish Labour leader, and Scottish Tory leader, are also giving speeches, at mid-morning and 1pm respectively. All the party heads are gearing up to the Holyrood elections in May.

Morning: The Prime Minister is on a visit in Berkshire where he is due to make comments to the press.

11.30am: The Prime Minister's office holds a press briefing.

2.30pm: The home secretary, takes queries in the Commons.

After 3.30pm: The foreign secretary, is anticipated to give a update to MPs about the ongoing situation.