Shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel has defended previous comments she made about Donald Trump in the wake of the Capitol riots, claiming they were “absolutely right and fair”.
Dame Priti, who was home secretary at the time of the incident in 2021, told the BBC on Sunday that “no-one wants to see violence after elections”.
She had said in January 2021 that Mr Trump’s comments “directly led to the violence”.
It comes as Labour’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, has faced criticism over some of his previous comments about the president-elect.
I think these comments in light of what happened were absolutely right and fair and relevant
Asked if she wants to apologise for what she said in 2021, Dame Priti told the Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “That was a major, major situation. I was home secretary at the time then and we were obviously working with our US counterparts on security issues.
“No-one wants to see violence after elections.”
In 2021, Dame Priti said Mr Trump’s statement following the events at the Capitol in which he said “we love you” to the rioters and repeated his baseless claims of electoral fraud, did “very little to de-escalate the situation”.
She said at the time: “His comments directly led to the violence and so far he has failed to condemn that violence, and that is completely wrong.”
She told the BBC on Sunday: “If you go back and you saw the extent of the violence and effectively undermining of democracy… those pictures were pretty stark in terms of what happened.”
She later added: “I think these comments in light of what happened were absolutely right and fair and relevant.”
She said Mr Lammy’s comments were however “much more personal and undiplomatic to the president-elect of the United States”.
Mr Lammy has drawn scrutiny in recent days for past remarks, including calling Mr Trump a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath”.
In January 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol in Washington DC in an attempt to disrupt the proceedings as Joe Biden was confirmed as the president-elect.
Mr Trump had addressed thousands of supporters at a rally near the White House before the chaos ensued, promising to “never concede” that he had lost the 2020 presidential election.
