Will there ever be an end to Venezuela’s misery?

Venezuelans are preparing for a difficult Christmas – the worst of recent times. The middle-class families I have spoken to in Barquisimeto, Venezuela’s fourth largest city, are not able to afford even the most basic of ingredients for their traditional Christmas meal of pork leg, hallaca, ham and potato salad. These are families who, in the 90s, owned two cars, bought second homes, studied abroad and went on regular holidays to the Andes or the coast. They enjoyed a standard of life much like middle-class Britain, but now their salaries and pensions won’t even stretch to cover a weekly shop. The average Venezuelan lost 11kg in weight last year alone. My Venezuelan acquaintances living here in the UK are increasingly concerned by the pictures they see on social media of friends back home, many of whom are unrecognisable.

When Hugo Chavez was elected democratically in 1998 he inherited an oil-rich nation with reserves bigger than even Saudia Arabia.