Which British politician would be loopy enough to defend the Venezuelan regime as it guns down protesters and arrests opposition politicians? Need a clue? Didn’t think so. This week, Ken Livingstone – once an adviser to the late Hugo Chavez – said that the reason for the country’s woes was that Chavez ‘did not execute the establishment elite’ when he came to power. For good measure, he added:
‘America has got a long record of undermining any Left-wing government as well… it’s not all just down to the problems of the [Venezuelan] government.’
While reporting recently on the appalling collapse of that country, I found myself staring into the barrel of a gun held by a masked teenager, high on cannabis, in one of Caracas’ lawless suburbs. American meddling in action, eh, Ken? Or a Chavista thug belatedly mistaking me for a member of the elite? Support for Venezuela’s disastrous neo-Socialist regime among Corbynites has become a bitter joke.
Years ago, when Venezuela defied economic gravity by exploiting its massive oil reserves while nationalising all profit-making enterprise, the hard Left lauded it as proof that – in the words
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