Badenoch Backs US Action In Venezuela, Says Morally Right 

UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said the recent US military intervention in Venezuela was morally justified despite expressing doubts about its legal basis.

Badenoch made the remarks in an interview with the BBC, saying she did not fully understand the legal framework behind US President Donald Trump’s operation that led to the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

However, she argued that the action was justified on moral grounds, citing Maduro’s record of repression.

“Where the legal certainty is not yet clear, morally, I do think it was the right thing to do,” Badenoch said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Describing the US move as “extraordinary,” she said she understood the reasoning behind it, given the nature of Maduro’s leadership.

“He was overseeing a brutal regime, and I’m glad he’s gone,” she added.

Badenoch acknowledged that the intervention raised wider concerns about global norms, warning that it posed serious questions for the international rules-based order.

“It does raise serious questions about the rules-based order,” she said, particularly regarding how international law is interpreted and enforced.

The UK government has so far refrained from criticising the US move or stating whether it violated international law, Instead, officials have maintained that Maduro was an “illegitimate president.”

In contrast, several Labour MPs and opposition parties, including the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and the Scottish National Party, have called on the government to formally condemn the intervention, describing it as illegal.

Drawing on her personal background, Badenoch said her views were shaped by growing up under military rule.

“I grew up under a military dictatorship, so I know what it’s like to have someone like Maduro in charge,” she said, referring to her childhood in Nigeria before moving to the UK at the age of 16.

However, she cautioned against applying such intervention universally, saying democratic states should be treated differently. She argued it was right to warn Trump against any intervention in Greenland.

“There is a big difference between democratic states and the gangster state in Venezuela,” Badenoch said. “What happens in Greenland is up to Denmark and the people of Greenland.”