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Good morning. Prior to the holidays, the Labour leader had intended to use the first week back after the parliamentary break to focus on ministers' actions to reduce the cost of living. He outlined this argument recently in a piece where he cited steps including plans to reduce energy bills. However, Starmer’s economic PR blitz has been blown out of the news agenda by Donald Trump, and his entirely different strategy to ensuring supporters receive affordable power.

No one in British political life appears particularly eager on adopting the American method – which is probably good news for other nations.

But there is an intense debate ongoing about what the UK government should be willing to say about Trump’s decision to extradite the Venezuelan president, and install a successor with someone anticipated to be more compliant with American interests, particularly in regarding the country’s oil industry.

Keir Starmer has refused to censure the American intervention, and the government has avoided questions about whether or not it viewed what happened as legal. Last night, European Union members apart from one nation issued a collective declaration which, while not explicitly condemning, did stress the importance of international law, and by implication accuse Trump of disregarding it. It said:

EU members urge calm and restraint by all actors, to avoid escalation and to ensure a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

The Union recalls that, under all circumstances, the principles of the rules-based order and the UN Charter must be upheld. Members of the United Nations Security Council have a particular responsibility to defend those principles, as a cornerstone of the international security architecture.

The migration minister, was doing an interview round this morning and, when asked if Starmer was declining to say the Maduro extradition violated global statutes because he was afraid of antagonising Trump, Tapp replied:

Absolutely not. The British government are and will remain in conversations with the Americans. And it’s for the Americans to lay out the juridical rationale for the steps that they’ve undertaken. And we’re also talking with key partners examining the juridical dimension of this.

But recently, in an appearance on the BBC, the chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee (and a former shadow attorney general), said she was deeply worried about the way Trump seems to think, like the Russian leader and China’s Xi Jinping, that he could do what he wanted in his area of control.

Questioned about Starmer declining to say that Trump was in violation of international law, she said, because the PM was in office, he had to weigh up “multiple factors”. But she was in a different position because she was not a minister, she said. She went on:

In the end there is no getting away from it. This is an unlawful move.

[Starmer] may well want to hear what the reasoning is from the US administration. I can get in front of us and say I literally think of anything that could be a valid excuse.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: John Swinney, gives a speech in Glasgow. The Scottish Labour leader, and Scottish Tory leader, are also giving speeches, at 10.30am and 1pm respectively. All the party heads are looking ahead to the Holyrood elections in May.

Morning: The Prime Minister is on a tour in Berkshire where he is scheduled to speak to the press.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a press briefing.

2.30pm: Shabana Mahmood, takes queries in the Commons.

After 3.30pm: Yvette Cooper, is expected to give a statement to MPs about the ongoing situation.