How Britain helped Trump destabilise Venezuela

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Watch Latin America expert and Declassified chief reporter John McEvoy discuss his latest article on Britain's meddling in Venezuelan affairs.

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During the early hours of Saturday morning, US forces bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro.

This was a clear breach of international law, violating the terms of the UN charter which prohibit interference in and the use of force against sovereign states.

Yet Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, has refused to condemn the attack or even acknowledge its brazen illegality.

“I want to get all the material facts together and we simply haven’t got the full picture at the moment”, the prime minister told the BBC on Saturday.

Starmer then wrote on social media that Britain “regarded Maduro as an illegitimate President and we shed no tears about the end of his regime”.

By contrast, it took him less than 24 hours to call Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a “war of aggression”.

Former British ambassador Sir Richard Dalton told Declassified the government has failed to stand up against “the law of the jungle” with its “cynical” stance on Venezuela.

While refusing to condemn Trump’s actions, Starmer insisted there “was no UK involvement in this operation”.

But even if British forces did not directly participate in the military operation, the UK government has been quietly backing Washington’s destabilisation efforts in Venezuela for years.

Since 2019, Britain has frozen over $2 billion of Venezuelan gold in the Bank of England, sponsored anti-government initiatives, and even set up a secret “Venezuela Reconstruction Unit” to plan for the day after Maduro’s overthrow.

Starmer is therefore not speaking in abstract terms when he says “the UK has long supported a transition of power in Venezuela”.

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