‘Keir Starmer is viewed as WEAK in Washington!’ | Former aide to Margaret Thatcher slams Starmer

It's Saturday night and you're with The Saturday Five. I'm Dr Renee Hundegamp and I can promise you that you are in for yet another very lively hour. It's been pretty hot so far. Let's crack on with tonight's main event though. President Trump confirms that the USA have carried out large strikes on Venezuela. We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. So we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country. Well to discuss this further I'm really pleased to welcome Niall Gardner, the foreign policy analyst and former aide to Lady Thatcher. Niall, thank you for joining us tonight. There is so much evolving from what we've seen tonight with this incredible press conference that Trump has held. It seems to me that there's probably much more below the surface that we've yet to find out about why he has done this and how he has done it. What's your initial take? Well thanks very much for having me on the show from Washington DC and I think firstly of course this was a stunningly successful military operation actually on a far bigger scale than the Zero Dark Thirty raid against Osama Bin Laden. So this was a much bigger military exercise. It involved actually about 150 US aircraft operating from 20 bases and so this was a display of American exceptionalism on the world stage. A highly successful precision operation and I think that no one is questioning American leadership on the world stage right now and its ability to take out the enemies of the United States and Maduro of course a very nasty narco-terrorist dictator has found out to his cost that defying President Trump, even mocking President Trump actually comes at a great cost. So I do think this was actually a great day for the United States and also for Venezuela as well. But of course the next question will be how exactly the US administration in Venezuela will work and the President talked a bit about the next steps but we'll have to see exactly what happens in terms of how this US administration will actually work on the ground in Venezuela. But let me say this, people of Venezuela are vastly better off without Maduro in power, a very evil tyrant of course responsible for the deaths of large numbers of Americans through the vast drug supply that has flown into the US over previous years from Venezuela. So he will get his just desserts in a court in New York shortly. Now I couldn't agree more on that final point but within that answer you also a couple of times referred to how this would be perceived on the world stage. You said that this would be, or was I should say now, a show of American exceptionalism. At the same time we've heard some people on the panel tonight say that this could actually be a way for rogue states or for powers like Russia or China to legitimise their efforts to for example take Taiwan or to continue in Ukraine. How do you think this changes the way that China and Russia think about their regional interests, if at all? Well that's a very good question and I think that the downfall of Maduro of course is a big blow to Beijing and to Moscow after all. The Venezuelan dictator was really a client of the Russians and the Chinese and so this is a big blow actually to both Putin and Xi Jinping and a humiliation actually for the Russians and the Chinese. Also a blow of course to Cuba, to Iran and some other very nasty dictatorships on the international stage. So I would say actually this primarily of course is advances American power on the world stage, this very successful operation. No other nation in the world could carry out this kind of operation. The Chinese, the Russians for example simply could not do this and it's a demonstration of the fact that the United States is the undisputed leader of the world at this time. No one can challenge American global power. So I would argue actually that weakens the position of Russia and China and it sends a clear message to other client states of Moscow and Beijing that they could be next actually and the President did mention specifically Colombia and also Cuba as possible potential next targets for the United States. Well Niall I think that's a really interesting comment, not least because this will affect Cuba massively because they get their oil from Venezuela. So I think the Cubans are probably shaking in their seats tonight. But the other question I would have, because you've been an aide to Margaret Thatcher, could you ever have envisaged you know Reagan doing this without speaking to Thatcher first? Yeah that's an excellent point and I think that of course you know President Reagan consulted with Lady Thatcher on many many occasions. It's a different kind of special relationship right now because you have Keir Starmer in Downing Street who's an absolute disaster as Prime Minister and I don't think that the United States would actually trust Keir Starmer if he was consulted in advance you know with regard to US war plans. You simply can't trust Keir Starmer. I mean he's been a terrible Prime Minister and I think that you know the reality is that you know Donald Trump would not be consulting with Keir Starmer for any kind of military operation because the trust isn't there and Keir Starmer I think is viewed widely in in Washington as a very very weak and you know disastrous British Prime Minister and so he's very unpopular here in the United States. So it's a totally different dynamic but it's a great point that you make. Can I just ask a very quick question? Where do you think this leads now? Because I mean including in Lady Thatcher's time American adventurism in South America is not new but often has failed. You know you look at the examples from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s mostly these are countries where American funded coups or destabilization has led to a deterioration in that country's fortunes. What do you think are the key factors at play now as America enters this new period of a relationship with Venezuela if you can call it that at all? Yeah that's an interesting point. I would say actually the US military today is even more powerful and more effective than it was during the Cold War years and we saw that with the operation today in Venezuela which was an incredible high-risk operation but hugely successful. I think that you know with regard to Donald Trump I mean he's not of course interested in sort of long-term nation building in Latin America but he does want to ensure of course that there is stability in Venezuela and that Venezuela no longer operates as a malevolent narco state threatening the lives of American citizens through a large inflow of drugs or illegal migrants and so that's the immediate goal for the United States. I don't think the US has any intention of remaining long-term in Venezuela but they want to ensure that you do see a stability in Venezuela and that you also see a pro-western democracy in place in Caracas as opposed to the anti-western illegitimate dictatorship of course they saw under Nicolas Maduro. Do you think this is a message to China as well now? Absolutely in fact there was a Chinese high-level delegation in Caracas just a couple of days ago with Xi Jinping's special envoy to Venezuela and the US still struck Venezuela just a day later and so this does send a message to China that you know China fancies itself of course as some sort of big power in Latin America. The reality is there's only one big international force in Latin America right now that's the United States and as much as the Chinese want to be a big player and as much as the Russians want to be a big player in the western hemisphere they're not going to succeed and that's a clear message of course that Donald Trump is sending to Beijing and also to Moscow as well and in fact he had some very harsh words of Vladimir Putin at Mar-a-Lago in his press conference today. Now we've talked about how this will be received globally but we haven't talked about the domestic reception yet within the United States. Some people will see this to Kai's term as more adventurism in South America which is not America first whereas Trump is trying to frame this for a variety of reasons as being within America's interests. Do you think he will be able to win the comms campaign for want of a better term with his base and with the American public more generally? Yeah that's a really important point you make there and I do think that this latest move by the White House is overall going to be very popular among the American people. Firstly of course because this was a successful military operation there was no loss of US life at all, no casualties on the US side. I think secondly most Americans understand that the president took this action in order to protect the American people. Large numbers of Americans have died as a result of the inflow of drugs coming from Venezuela, Colombia and other countries in Latin America and so there's a huge cost of American life as a result of the inflow of illegal drugs from countries like Venezuela. So I do think that immediately there's going to be a huge amount of sympathy from the American public for US action taken against a dictator who has American blood on his hands actually. So I do think there'll be very strong public support but inevitably you're going to find a lot of figures on the left, socialist democrats for example who are condemning the president. They'll condemn the president no matter what he does but at the end of the day President Trump's actions here will save a large number of American lives and that's a popular I think decision for a US president to take. Yeah I mean it's so interesting Niall, I'm sure we've got lots more to come over the next few days. Thank you so much for joining us tonight, that was really interesting. My pleasure, many thanks.