Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Oskirts

and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman and James Heel for our first podcast back in the office of

26. And the year has started with a bang, of course, after the successful US operation to remove Nicholas

Maduro from Venezuela. He will appear in a Manhattan court lace today. But of course, this

throws up all sorts of problems for Labour and the left more broadly. They seem to be hedging

their bets on whether to condemn this as a breach of, if not international law, then certainly

international norms, or to celebrate the removal of, if not international law, then certainly international norms,

or to celebrate the removal of a corrupt regime.

Tim, can you explain the headache that's surely going on at the moment in number 10?

Look, I mean, I think what this reveals is, well, several things.

There's always a good international crisis over Christmas.

I think January 3rd is the date that General Noriega fell back in 1983. People are drawing parallels with here, obviously.

Look, I think what Trump's action reveals is the supreme relevance of most of Europe in international affairs, to be perfectly honest.

Kirstama was neither in the picture nor made any contribution to this effort. And I think,

you know, militarily it was a huge success. It raises a huge number of questions. Internationally,

there's a lot of bleating on the British left, and this is where it becomes relevant to Stama, about or it's a breach of international law. The government, as you say, has hedged its bets. It hasn't had one way or the other. This puts me very firmly in mind of the bombing of Iran a few months ago, where the British government didn't want to condemn Trump, but DILTA didn't want to say it was legal, and I suspect that was for broadly the same reason as it was then, as I revealed on the spectator at the time, the Attorney General, Lord

Herma, who's a big one for international law, took the view that it was not legal and that the

government could not be seen to support it.

Actually, Stama's position is no more tortured than any other European leader.

There's been a bit of support from Georgia Maloney in Italy, a bit of condemnation from some

quarters, but most European leaders, knowing how important America still is to European

defence and how Mercurial Trump is have hedged their bets on this.

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