Venezuela

Torcuil Crichton Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We want to see regional stability and calm across the region, and partnership working between nations—that is crucial. Delcy Rodríguez has clearly been part of the Maduro regime for a long time. We believe that there needs to be a transition to democracy that engages all the different Opposition parties and players in Venezuela. That is what we will work to do, and it is what I have discussed with Secretary Rubio.

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for her statement and her stamina. Over the past hour and 40 minutes, no one has regretted the downfall of Nicolás Maduro, but notwithstanding what the Foreign Secretary has said about the tension between practical, progressive realism and political principle, few of us can condone his kidnapping to stand trial in the domestic courts of another country. This has all the hallmarks of a treacherous deal between the remnants of the Maduro regime and the United States. Does the Foreign Secretary accept that it signals the end of the rules-based international order, and that the fraying of that order benefits not our friends in the west, but our foes in the east?

[Yvette Cooper]

I reiterate a point that I have already made: there have always been challenges and strains around frameworks of international law and the realities of particular issues in different parts of the world. The UK has always argued for the maintenance of the rules-based order, and for the alliances that uphold it. For us, one of those alliances is the transatlantic one. We need both to maintain support for the rules-based order and to maintain the crucial partnerships that have upheld that rules-based order—we need to be able to do both.