Starmer's 2026 reset in chaos as Trump eyes Greenland

0:09Five days in and the Prime Minister's great New Year reset has already been plunged into total chaos. He was out of the loop on Venezuela. He's welcomed an anti-Semite into the country. And although the PM says he's going to keep his job, there are already plots to bring him down. We also speak to former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, John Bolton, about why the US President has taken on Venezuela and which country may be next. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

0:49Happy New Year, Tim. Happy New Year. How was your holiday? Very nice, very chilled. Remained at home, did very little, was going to bake with phyllo pastry. The phyllo pastry's still in the fridge. It was all, I would say, very low on the blood pressure measure, apart from Christmas Day itself, where some food was produced by me and my sister-in-law, as if by magic, frankly. It all came together after we'd been in the pub for an hour, which I thought was no mean feat. The only time I've had some issues that may have required a defibrillator was taking my 17-year-old daughter out as a learner in her car.

1:28Oh, wow. Now, we have given her four intensive four-hour blocks of lessons, so she's up to 16 hours. Does she think she can pass in one go? Is that why? We hope she can. Right. Not least because you have to wait several years for a date to come through, because of the DVLA. It's quite hair-raising taking a teenager out driving. We had a little incident in the village next to ours yesterday where I said, turn right at a roundabout. And she translated that into almost ploughing into a lovely lady in a Kia coming in the opposite direction. So I then did that thing of like, I'm holding onto the dash anyway.

2:04Brake! Brake! And my son is also in the car. We're like, there was a row. Apparently dad is better at accompanying the learner driver than mum is. she stormed back into the house and my son died. We said, oh my God, we were nearly killed. It's also bad weather to learn how to drive in. Yeah. Well, it was great because the roads were so empty between Christmas and New Year. But then when the roads became icy, that did add an extra layer of, in my case, hysteria. Yes. Because I was basically advocating her driving at five miles an hour in third. And they have to learn. I've made her learn as a manual driver, even though she'll probably always drive automatics, because I think if you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly.

2:47How was Prague? Well, this Christmas I mostly ate Pringles and watched television, but I did take a holiday to Prague. Lovely city, very beautiful, packed full of tourists, very much a party town. Yes, people go there on stag do's and things. I took my mother and I said we should go to a medieval dinner, which was advertised in Prague. That's such a you thing to do. Because I had been to one in Estonia, it was really nice. but this is how I learned the difference between a medieval dinner and a medieval-themed dinner. Right. So the one in Estonia was a medieval dinner where you were served an authentic menu by a lady dressed in a medieval costume, and you were serenaded by people playing authentic medieval instruments, which they would explain to you how they worked afterwards.

3:31By contrast, the medieval-themed dinner we had in Prague is very different. Medieval-themed means you're served chicken and chips by a man dressed as a jester. How was that? It was all right. I mean, the chicken and chips was very nice, but halfway through there was a performance of traditional sword fighting by pirates. Wrong era. They played the Pirates of the Caribbean theme music while they did it. And as you say, wrong century, but also Prague is landlocked. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. I didn't think there were many Czech pirates. So look out for the word themed. I could be wrong. I left my dog behind and you could trace what was going on through the photos on Facebook.

4:12And it was heartbreaking. What did Bertie's little face say to you? It's a very nice kennels and they put up these photos saying, X having a great time, X rolling in mud, etc. But every photo I looked at, I could see him thinking, where's dad? Are you coming home, dad? Should I speak to the camera and ask dad, please come home? Well, we had a few issues with Baroness Lionel of Blair, our cat. over Christmas because she was not eating with the enthusiasm she usually does. Then I took her to the vet. It turned out to be the wrong vet, but that's another story. And she was diagnosed with a case of gingivitis.

4:46And so I've subsequently been brushing her teeth. I'm not sure if I've ever tried to brush a cat's teeth. No. It's really very hard and they don't cooperate, funny enough. You know, cats don't cooperate generally. So she's got her jaw just wired shut as I am. And I've got this special brush on the end of my finger with some toothpaste that smells horrific, but apparently cats quite like it. And I'm trying to force it. It's not going well. I think I might need to actually just take her back to the vet, have her put out and have her teeth professionally cleaned. But I put that off because it's about 500 quid and it's been an expensive Christmas as it always is.

5:25Bertie, my dog, uses a meat flavoured toothpaste, which is disgusting. But I get around it by just using bones, I'm afraid. brushing his teeth, he won't comply. So I just play the bone game with him, where I hold the bone and he tries to get the bone off me. And this can last up to 60 minutes. And it does a pretty good job of cleaning the teeth. Yeah, if I held a bone up to Lionel, she would look at me with an air of complete contempt and just walk away. That is the difference, ladies and gentlemen, between cats and dogs. Shall we talk about Keir Starmer, who's making, frankly, a dog's breakfast of his New Year reset.

6:00It's a very unhappy New Year, isn't it? Well, he thought it would be happy. He was writing countless op-eds over the weekend. Yes. Channeling his inner Brian Cox from D-Ream. You know, he was, I think, on the keyboards once and now he talks about the stars and the fate of the universe. Anyway, so he was telling everybody things can only get better and that 2026 should be filled with hope that we're going to turn a corner. That builds upon an interview he gave to Laura Kunzberg in which he predicted that he would still be in the job in one year's time. Do we agree with that New Year's prediction?

6:35I just think it's so funny. I know. That is the height of your aspiration. Imagine bringing home a deadbeat to meet your parents. And they say, how are things going career-wise? I believe I will still be in this job in one year's time. We know that Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham are agitating for themselves to be in his job in a year's time. Both of them are banging on about rejoining the customs union. That was an interesting news line in that interview, to be fair. This idea of the prime minister now flirting once again with some kind of EU reset on top of his own attempted reset, which hasn't gone very well.

7:11Quite how that appeals to Labour voters in the red wall. God only knows. And then this extraordinary situation. And we're going to speak to John Bolton, Donald Trump's former national security adviser about Venezuela a bit later on the podcast. But wasn't there something uniquely humiliating about Britain being completely frozen out of the actions against Maduro over the weekend? I don't think it's uniquely. I will give Britain that. I don't think we're the only ones who were frozen out. But I do agree that Starmer is in an unusually bad situation because he has tried to locate himself between America and Europe.

7:52So we all know that he cannot condemn the raid on Venezuela because that would alienate the United States. At the same time, he can't applaud the raid on Venezuela because it goes against everything he as a human rights lawyer, fan of Davos, international man of mystery, travels the world to these various conventions. It's not something he can possibly endorse at the same time. So he's left, as Darren Jones did on your programme, with just simply explaining to you what has happened in the last 24 hours. It's something unique to politicians. Would you like a cup of tea? Well, in the last 24 hours, of course, you've offered me a cup of tea.

8:29Yes, but I'm not really in a position to say whether or not I want a cup of tea. The important thing, Camilla, is that tea is being drunk. Let's focus on the future in which tea will be drunk. But would you like one? Just to qualify this, this is when I asked Derren Jones whether he supported what Donald Trump had done. And I then got a running commentary of what Donald Trump had done in Venezuela, rather than any commitment from him as an individual cabinet minister or the prime minister or a representative of the Labour government as to whether or not we supported this mission. And let's be honest, the imagery of it was extraordinary.

9:02There were shades of tyrant in his pants, you know, Saddam Hussein being toppled to see Maduro in that extraordinary garb where he basically looked like my son playing on a VR with the sort of blindfold that resembled a pair of 1980s sunglasses, ear mufflers on, presumably to stop him and his wife from finding out where they were being escorted to by the US military. I watched it thinking, could Trump do Britain next? Well, he set his sights on...

9:57removal of Maduro. At least everyone knows what Maduro is. He's an out and out, unashamed, you know, heir of Chavez, socialist stroke communist. Unfortunately, Starmer wouldn't provoke any kind of ideological response to even engender a coup, would he? It's like, who is this guy? We'll get him to why this happened with John Bolton. But Donald Trump is truly following an America first policy here, where he's just doing what he believes is in the long-term interests, economic interests of his own country. And on the one hand, that upends the Western alliance, because there are some commitments that Europe has, say, towards Ukraine, that Donald Trump does not feel he shares.

10:37And likewise, Europe has commitments towards the rules-based order. Not quite sure what kind of a rules-based order it is when a left-wing dictator can just steal elections, but Europe wants to uphold the rules-based order, and Donald Trump doesn't care about the rules if they stand in his way. Now, Keir Starmer has hitched everything on to, I'm the Trump whisperer. I'm the one who can get on well with this man and I can flatter him back into the NATO alliance and keep him on board with Ukraine. Well, the problem is that Venezuela completely upends that. It proves that America's not talking to Britain.

11:11I'm sure Britain's advice, had it been asked, would have been completely different and it would have been totally ignored. Well, it would have been Lord Herma's advice, which is don't meddle with anything that might compromise international law. Right. But the point is that Britain has only been getting on well with Donald Trump insofar as it flattered everything Donald Trump did. And this is something which has been noticed by the left. Ed Davey asks this question now almost every week at PMQs, when are you going to split with Trump and when are you going to rejoin the Customs Union? Yes. But I think there's probably a growing number, especially post-Venezuela, because a lot of people in the Labour Party love Hugo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor, and admire Maduro.

11:49Jeremy Corbyn. They'll be thinking, why are we allied with this rogue state? Why aren't we talking about going back in with Europe? And the answer to that, of course, and Keir Starmer has given it, is because I've done a trade deal with America. And Starmer may not be economically super hot, but he's not a fool. He does know that the future is AI. Britain is a services economy. And it means regulatory or deregulatory alignment with America, not with Europe. So we find ourselves in this very strange no man's land of, on the one hand, sympathising with the legalistic liberal values of Europe. And on the other hand, knowing that our future lies with America.

12:27And the result is our prime minister is just left mute, dumb. There's nothing he can say. Well, also just weakened, because whether or not you agree with Donald Trump, at least he has been unequivocal. You know, we've had over the course of the Christmas and New Year holidays, these two foreign affairs concerns, the situation in Venezuela and then Iran. I was staggered to discover that Keir Starmer has kept up the post celebrating the return of the Egyptian activist stroke anti-Semite stroke self-confessed racist. Wow. So that's what he doubles down on. Yes. Not Winterfuel, not the farmer's tax.

13:09Yes. He's doubling down on letting Fata into the country. And according to number 10 sources, he is still welcome in the country, even though the prime minister has conceded that the warmth of the welcome was perhaps overstated. And had they known what journalists were able to discover within two minutes of doing a Google search on this bloke, then they might not have been quite so effusive. Something previously known because he was denied a prize because of his public statements. So he keeps that post on X. There is nothing from the prime minister. Oh, or by the way, his equally liberal and democratic compadre, Ed Davey, on the plight of Iranians.

13:50Right. On the persecuted and tortured young women who have been trying collectively to overthrow the Ayatollah, removing hijabs, performing dances and gymnastics in the streets. And frankly, their shameful silence on both issues is only matched by the indifference of the largely white liberals who cannot say anything or march in support at all of Iranians who are actually aligned with Israelis in wanting to seek some kind of Middle Eastern democracy out of the hell that they've endured since 1979. Nothing from the progressives, nothing from the celebrity loveys on any of these issues. And now we've got the same types who refuse to celebrate those trying to overthrow the Islamic regime, criticising Trump's colonialism, even though Venezuelans have been celebrating the demise of Maduro in the streets.

14:52So apparently white liberals know better than Venezuelans. There were a couple of excellent articles over the winter period. One was by Paul Ovenden. He is an advisor who lost his job over a salty joke about Diane Abbott. Yes. And who now is very much getting his own back and wrote an excoriating article explaining that Britain is in the grips of something he called the stakeholder state, of which Keir Starmer is the prime example. This is a state which is run, he says, not so much by the civil service, but by a coalition of activist groups, causes, celebrities, and all those types who force it to follow their interests and obsess about their concerns.

15:33And he gives Fata, he says, when he was working in office, he was stunned by the number of times Fata came up and it became something of a running joke. and it was an example of how a cause can overwhelm the civil service, even though it has no basis in the public interest. And of course, I guess the flip side of that is if you don't have an activist group on your side, if you don't have people pushing for you, like I doubt that within the foreign office, there are a lot of people pushing for freedom for Venezuela, right? There are a lot of people pushing for regime change in Iran. If you don't have that, then you're not going to get the outcome that you might want.

16:09Yes. Another really good piece that was written over the winter was by Aaron Bastani, who has been on this show, The Marxist, who wrote a superb takedown of what's going to be a major issue this year for Keir Starmer, which is the English local government reform. Yes. Which has resulted in some cases in historic municipalities being joined together who have nothing in common, Portsmouth and Southampton. It's resulted in very expensive bureaucratic refits. And it's also meant that elections have been canceled, which is going to be a sort of democratic crisis. People are going to notice this when it finally creeps up on them.

16:44And he points out in this piece that the whole idea was dreamt up by PricewaterhouseCoopers. that it was a private company was asked for its advice. Stakeholders, state people took it on. And then having taken it on, to be fair to PwC, it laid out how you could do this in such a way as to save money. But partly because of pressure, they didn't want to amalgamate certain places. They have lowered the threshold for how many people should be in these new bodies. And the result is they might not even get the savings they want. And Bastani sums this up really well. He says it distills so much about our political class.

17:18You identify a genuine existing problem, the expensive nature of local government, adopt a technocratic blueprint devised by consultants, implement the whole thing with maximum incompetence. And so what is Starmer hoping is going to happen this year? He's hoping that all of the horrible things his chancellor have done to us over the last 18 months are going to finally pay off. The wind turbines are finally going to somehow result in the lowering of energy prices. that all things are going to stabilise and we're going to start to feel the benefits. He doesn't seem to realise that not only is he piled on the damage, but he is not the man to reform the stakeholder state because he's one of the stakeholders.

17:58He's got skin in the game. Also, the disconnect between the Prime Minister's wishful thinking and the public thinking was probably best demonstrated at the darts when the final on Saturday, which saw Luke Littler win for a second time the World Championship, was dominated by, I'm not going to repeat the chants about Keir Starmer, but they weren't pretty. And I think the alley-pally crowd basically sums up the sentiment of most people in Britain, which is that when the Prime Minister speaks, the public looks and sees a deluded man on his last legs spouting, you know, self-congratulatory nonsense.

18:38Yes, I'm afraid he hangs over this country like a dark cloud. And that same way in every new year, you want to start with clean teeth like your cat. Or you want to start with the decorations put away and the house all tidy. And then you realise, we've still got to take that delayed train into work. I'm still living with this person I hate. I know. And it's the same with the prime minister. You think, and I've still got Keir Starmer as prime minister. Yeah, I know. I can't move on with my life because Keir Starmer is running my country. Yes, this Labour prime minister is for life, not just for Christmas.

19:08At least for the next four years. So the Prime Minister is feeling positive, or so he says. The public, rather less so. Just 9 % say that they think 2026 will be fairly or very good, according to YouGov. 9%. It's quite high. I thought that was quite high when I heard that. Did you? Yeah. I thought a thing was so bad that we've got 9 % of people working in the public sector. I think actually the figure is much bigger than that. I know, even people in the public sector. He's even losing the public sector. Wow. So we're stuck with this regime, but somewhere in the world, another one has changed. Let's talk to John Bolton, Foreign Policy Supremo from the United States, and ask, why did Donald Trump do what he did?

19:53And what's he going to do next?

20:06Ambassador Bolton, thank you very much for joining us. You were a national security advisor in Donald Trump's first term, but you have, of course, been something of a critic before and since, and even during. My first question is, how long was Maduro's arrest in the pipeline, do you think? And why did it happen now? Well, I think in Trump's disorganized way of thinking, the option of doing something about Maduro and or the regime was probably there for a long time. Certainly the Pentagon, by every press report we've had, took months of planning before the operation was carried out on Saturday.

20:41So I think the option may have been there for a long while. Why it occurred on the 3rd of January, my theory is because it's the anniversary in 1990 when Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama, surrendered to U.S. forces there. It's also the sixth anniversary of the successful US strike against Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Quds Force. So I think that may have been in Trump's mind. But I think he had also basically concluded that he wasn't getting what he wanted out of Maduro and that something else had to be done. I think the main problem right now is that while Maduro may be about to appear in court in the United States, the rest of the regime is still there.

21:26And these are hardcore Chavistas, followers of the dictator Hugo Chavez, whom Maduro succeeded. They're not suppressed Democrats who are now looking for a chance to negotiate with the United States. Their main objective is going to be to keep the regime in place. And that's why some people are speculating that this was in fact an internally supported coup. Is that a reasonable speculation? Well, I've seen the suggestion of that, obviously, I don't have any evidence one way or the other on another that's what's been out there publicly. I kind of doubt it. I think the regime will do a lot of things to preserve itself.

22:03And it may well conclude that throwing Maduro under the bus is worth it. But it's also important to keep in mind that the decision makers are not just people like Delce Rodriguez or her brother, conveniently, Jorge Rodriguez, the president of the National Assembly, or Vladimir Pedro Padrino, the minister of defense, the Russians, the Chinese, the Cubans, the Iranians all have major stakes in keeping that regime in power for a variety of reasons. And they may have concluded that Maduro had outlived his shelf life and that sacrificing him to maintain the regime itself might be worthwhile. I don't know.

22:44It's very hard to tell. certainly the fact that military force had to be used to get Maduro out doesn't sound like it was entirely cooperative. And so I think there's still a lot to learn there. If it's true that Maduro was sold out, it shows really just how untrustworthy this regime is. Ambassador Bolton, Donald Trump has suggested this is about drugs, predominantly describing Venezuela as a narco state, suggesting that it's down to him trying to stop cocaine being run into America. Is it about drugs or is it about oil and specifically China's reliance on Venezuelan oil? Well, I think in Trump's mind, it's all mushed together.

23:24And there's the illegal drugs thing. There's the equation of drug trafficking with terrorism, which is completely inaccurate. There's concern about illegal immigration, with Trump saying that Venezuela has opened its mental institutions and prisons for people to come to the United States, also not true. Then there's oil. Then there are the real reasons, which we were concerned about in 2018 and 2019, of which were perfectly legitimate in considering today. And that is Russia using Venezuela as a base of activities in this hemisphere, much safer for the Russians than Cuba, which is still not moved from 90 miles away from the United States.

24:04The Cubans have a vested interest in keeping Maduro in power because they fear correctly that if Maduro falls, the post-Castro regime in Cuba may fall. And I hope it does. And the Noriega dictatorship in Nicaragua, the part of the troika of tyranny, as I called it during the first Trump term. Chinese, as you mentioned, are very interested in Venezuela's oil. And let's not forget, by most estimates, Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil in the ground of any country in the world, including Saudi Arabia and the United States. Right now, although production is low, I think China buys about 80 % of Venezuela's oil exports.

24:45It doesn't want to see that disappear. And Iran has the largest Iranian embassy in the world in Caracas, where it helps oversee Hezbollah activities in the Western Hemisphere. It helps launder sanctioned Iranian financial assets through Venezuela's financial system. And it's looking over Venezuela's uranium reserves in the ground, which are also among the largest in the world. So these external factors cause instability in the Western Hemisphere. They're direct threats to the United States. That's what justified our interest back in 2018 and 2019 and justifies it today, along with the fact that the Venezuelan opposition, the legitimate winners of the 2018 election, the legitimate president in Juan Guaido back then, what should be the legitimate president today, Edmundo Gonzalez, whom all neutral observers said won the election in 2024, invited American participation in eliminating the Maduro regime.

25:45So I think we were perfectly justified. Trump just doesn't seem to get that. There has been suggestion of a possible quid pro quo with Russia, that Russia is happy to see America assert its dominance in its region on the understanding that Russia will then be allowed to do the same in Ukraine. Do you think that's possibly true? you? Well, I think it's possible, but I think a lot of people give Trump too much credit for thinking in grand geostrategic terms about spheres of influence internationally. He's not playing 3D chess. He's playing one move at a time, as is demonstrated by the confusion that exists now, based on what Trump said Saturday, that we're going to be running Venezuela.

26:29When the man that some have already described as the viceroy of Venezuela, Marco Rubio, took pains in our Sunday talk shows to say, no, I'm not going to be running Venezuela. We're going to be influencing the policy that they're going to pursue. I think Putin and Xi Jinping will use this very disorderly process that Trump has initiated as a precedent for them taking action in Ukraine or Taiwan. I think it would be wrong. I don't think it's justified in any sense of the word the way we are justified in Venezuela. You can't just use words as if they have no meaning and apply them a radically different situation.

27:06I know that Trump's lack of sense makes sense to you, if I can put that clumsily. But from the outside, we're all trying to figure out why he did what he did and what to expect next. And we thought he was elected on America first and non-intervention. And yet we've seen action in Iran. We've seen action in Venezuela. How can we predict what will happen next, especially given that he's brought up the subject of Greenland again. Look, he doesn't follow philosophy, national security doctrine, or even policy. These are all one-off transactional decisions. And the question you raise really goes to what the reaction of his political base would be.

27:51I think there are a lot of MAGA Republicans, his supporters, who are pretty astounded by this. And they're even more astounded to learn we're going to be running Venezuela. I don't think that was, as we say, on their bingo card when they voted for Trump in 2024. And the reaction domestically is going to be hard to predict. I would say in the short term, nothing succeeds like success. We've taken a bad guy out of the picture. That's got to be a plus politically for Trump. And many of his people have fallen in line, but there's no guarantee that it's going to stay that way. Marjorie Taylor Greene is annoyed, but that's a given.

28:29Tucker Carlson will be annoyed. I look forward to his next podcast about this. But what everyone's wondering is, where does J.D. Vance fit into all of this? Some people sense that Marco Rubio really took the lead on this, and Vance, who's a little more isolationist, has perhaps been squeezed out. Well, I think Vance is decidedly isolationist. And I think it's dangerous because he's much smarter than Trump. And he does think in more coherent strategic terms, to the great detriment of the United States, I would say, if his views prevail. I thought it was quite interesting on Saturday that Trump had Rubio, Pete Hegseth, General Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA.

29:10No J.D. Vance, who purely by coincidence had an engagement in Cincinnati, Ohio, and couldn't be there. I don't think that was by accident. And I think this is the splits, the tensions that this intervention could cause, I think will manifest themselves politically. I don't think the Democrats have handled this very well. You know, they've been talking about international law and this and that and the other thing. We just took a bad guy down. That's what most Americans think. And the question is, is that really what they want the president doing? Or do they want him concentrating on the economy, which many Americans feel is in difficult shape?

29:49I could just say one word on Greenland because I didn't respond to your earlier question. Look, I think Trump is trolling the world on Greenland. Remember how he negotiates. He makes the most incredible, outrageous demand he can think of. People pull their hair out in despair. How are we ever going to respond to that? He gets 50 percent, 30 percent of what he asked for. And it's a big success. Honestly, if the United States under Trump invaded Greenland, it would be the end of the NATO alliance. It would be a catastrophe for the Western world. What do you make of the circumspection of Western leaders like Keir Starmer?

30:27We had the prime minister out on the broadcast round yesterday basically saying, well, we're not going to shed any tears about Maduro's removal, but quite notably failing to give Donald Trump his backing. Now, we know Britain wasn't consulted. We don't know what that necessarily says about the special relationship. We weren't unique in not being consulted. But are Western leaders actually being shown to be weak in the face of what Trump's has done? Or do you think they're wise to hold their counsel? Well, I could see being reticent to say anything because facts are still scarce on the ground here.

31:00And honestly, don't feel bad that Starmer wasn't consulted. Neither was Congress. You know, they're Americans, actually, and they weren't consulted either. I think this was a decision of a very few people. That's the way Trump does things. And it can come back to biting. This idea that everything is going to be fine, that American oil companies are so desperate to get back the money that they lost when their Venezuelan investments were expropriated 50 years ago, that they will now pour additional billions into reviving the decrepit Venezuelan oil infrastructure and that much more Venezuelan oil will emerge onto international markets, particularly to the United States, because we used to import a lot of it.

31:43and keep oil prices, gasoline prices at the pump down is absolutely fantasy. No American oil company or certainly no board of directors of an American oil company is going to want to put tons of money into Venezuela in an uncertain political environment. By the way, the oil infrastructure in Venezuela is so bad, it will take years to get back up to anything like production levels they're capable of. So whoever benefits from increased oil exports from Venezuela is going to be the next president of the United States, not Donald Trump. Ambassador John Bolton, thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

32:23John Bolton makes a good point, doesn't he, about Trump being all mouth and no trousers on Greenland, potentially, because it would be cataclysmic. Trolling the world, yes. Trolling the world, but yet he does things like he did at the weekend and it makes you think, well, maybe it's not all a negotiation. Maybe he is aiming for global domination. I don't agree that he's not strategic. I think he's very strategic and I think he thinks in terms of maps, that he has this Monroe Doctrine map in his head. No, it's called the Donroe Doctrine now. Donro doctrine. He has America and he wants it to be surrounded by countries that he can rely upon, the United States can rely upon.

33:05And there are a number of countries that he hasn't done yet, of which the most significant really isn't Greenland, it's Mexico. There's a big debate about where the drugs really are coming from. Of course, the administration has been blaming Venezuela, but most people say, no, they're coming from Mexico via chemicals supplied by China. But either way, you can see that he's trying to establish this cordon sanitaire around the United States, which is ultimately what Trumpism is about, is about rebalancing the world in America's favor. And against China. And against China. The real competitor is China.

33:42Russia's not the competitor. China's the competitor. In fact, he can live with Russia. And that makes perfect sense from America's point of view. But the two problems I have with it is, one, it's not moral. Is it moral to go around kidnapping other people's countries' leaders? I don't think it is. I'm sorry. And the other problem is, is that it's great so long as you're part of the court and sanitaire, so long as you're on board. If you're just outside of it, like what Britain is, what do we do? We cannot rely upon this partner because ultimately, if we want something and it's not in America's interest to do it, he's not motivated by a sense of comradeship.

34:16He's motivated by self-interest. So we always live with that problem. And until recently, America for all its faults, it did break the rules-based order, but it was also the last word on it. And to compare this to, say, Noriega, well, Noriega really was drug running. That really was a slap against the cartels. By contrast, the role that Venezuela has played in drug smuggling is very controversial. Also, the whole doing it on the date, the anniversary of Noriega, and then another report, I don't know if you saw it, that the straw that broke the camel's back was Donald Trump seeing a video of Maduro taking the mickey out of his dancing.

34:55I mean, that's the other aspect of all this. We speak to somebody as respectable as John Bolton who talks us through the strategy or lack thereof. And then you also just have to factor in the Donald and how he wants to behave on any given day. And the intriguing thing is you have a ready-made alternative government, which is the leader of the opposition currently in exile, who got the Nobel Peace Prize. Why has he said he will work with the government of Maduro rather than with her? In fact, he's been very dismissive about her. And one rumor is it's because she won the Nobel Peace Prize, a prize he's always coveted.

35:29And because she didn't say, I cannot have this because Donald Trump deserves it instead, he holds a grudge against her. I don't know how much of this is fantasy and speculation. But the problem with Trump, and this comes back to why Bolton is, I don't agree with him philosophically, but none of his analysis is spot on about Trump personally, is the lack of a consistent philosophy behind it, which makes him so difficult to predict. I heard about this when it happened. I'd been ignoring all news over Christmas. I just put on my phone and I thought, we're at war with Venezuela. And then I thought, okay, it's a police operation.

35:59I get that. There's an indictment he's taken to a federal court in New York. It's about the drugs. Okay. And then Trump goes on TV and says, we're going to run Venezuela. And you're like, now he's running the place? And now he's not running the place. And now it's a coup. I can't keep up with the many different justifications for this military action. But, hey, we're all left with our heads spinning, as Trump would like them to be, thinking, what's this guy going to do next? Don't mess with Donald Trump, because he might do this to you next. One thought, if your party doesn't work out for Jeremy Corbyn, he could apply for a job running Venezuela.

36:32Bye. Bye, compo. See you later. Right, we'll be back tomorrow, 5pm.

36:43Thank you.