The Labour Left’s lengthy love affair with basket-case communists leaves Starmer squirming
Sir Keir Starmer‘s squirming reaction to the US strike on Venezuela is rooted in the long love affair which the Labour Left has enjoyed with the basket-case communist country.
Fearful of angering the US President, but also conscious of his party’s veneration of Caracas, the Prime Minister was reduced to saying that he wanted to ‘establish the facts, and take it from there’.
He told the BBC: ‘I don’t shy away from this, I’ve been a lifelong advocate of international law and the importance of compliance with international law’, before adding – as he tiptoed along his diplomatic tightrope – ‘The relationship between the US and the UK is one of the closest relationships in the world. It is vitally important for our defence, for our security, for our intelligence. It is my responsibility to make sure that relationship work’.
Sir Keir then issued a new line last night, in which he aligned more closely with Trump by saying: ‘We regarded Maduro as an illegitimate President and we shed no tears about the end of his regime.’
Privately, senior officials are more forthright. One diplomat told the Mail on Sunday: ‘We know that the US had war-gamed the ‘decapitation’ of the Venezuelan regime, and the simulation predicted chaos. This is a recipe for anarchy, but over in No.10 they seem paralysed – basically just sitting there and saying: ‘What the f***?’.’
The diplomat added: ‘They should be calling for the United Nations to oversee an election there now’.
Sir Keir knows that the left of his party has always admired the communist dictatorship – and hated Trump – with Jeremy Corbyn taking inspiration from Venezuelan policies of public ownership and price controls when he led Labour into the general elections of 2017 and 2019.
Sir Keir knows that the left of his party has always admired the communist dictatorship – and hated Trump
Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro was captured by US military
President Donald Trump standing near CIA Director John Ratcliffe as they watch the U.S. military operation in Venezuela
Last November, Mr Corbyn was one of a number of leftwing European politicians, including Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and Labour MP Richard Burgon, who warned against ‘the imminent threat of US military intervention in Venezuela
When Chavez died in 2013. Mr Corbyn paid tribute to the president by attending a vigil and thanking him for ‘showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared… He made massive contributions to Venezuela’.
Those contributions had centred around the introduction of hardline Marxism in the country, which had soon led to empty shelves, power cuts and the totalitarian suppression of human rights and free speech.
More than than a million people were forced to flee the country, with some of those who remained so hungry that they were reduced to eating cats.
The country, once the richest on the continent, seized the assets of overseas oil producers and redirected the profits into social programmes, causing the collapse of the oil industry, hyperinflation and the destruction of the tax base required to fund public services.
Maduro continued in the same style of economically-illiterate dictatorship: by last summer inflation had hit 230 per cent, with the economy shrinking to 75 per cent of its size in 2012 – now the poorest on the continent.
Last November, Mr Corbyn was one of a number of leftwing European politicians, including Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and Labour MP Richard Burgon, who warned against ‘the imminent threat of US military intervention in Venezuela’.
The Maduro Government was delighted, responding: ‘We thank Corbyn’s message of hope and ratify his words that change, progress and the future are unstoppable’.
Corbyn, now suspended from Labour and acting as the interim leader of Your Party – the shambolic new vehicle for his socialism which he founded with fellow former Labour MP Zarah Sultana – said yesterday: ‘The US has launched an unprovoked and illegal attack on Venezuela. This is a brazen attempt to secure control over Venezuelan natural resources. It is an act of war that puts the lives of millions of people at risk – and should be condemned by anyone who believes in sovereignty and international law’.
