How he hero-worshipped Venezuela’s Marxist leader

VENEZUELA’S socialist government has been hero-worshipped by Jeremy Corbyn.

On the day then-president Hugo Chavez died in 2013, the Labour leader put down an Early Day Motion in the Commons praising his ‘huge contribution… to conquering poverty’.

Then at a vigil, Mr Corbyn said: ‘Chavez showed us that there is a different and a better way of doing things.’

In 2015, at a London rally for the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, he said he looked forward to the country’s development, adding: ‘There is an alternative to austerity and cuts, and enriching the richest and impoverishing the poorest, and it is called socialism.’

When asked about president Nicolas Maduro that year, he said: ‘Venezuela gives every child a future, a school, a doctor – a chance.’ And on his website during his first contest for the Labour leadership he praised its ‘success for radical policies’.

Last month, when Tory MP Marcus Fysh asked if the crisis was an example of socialism going horribly wrong, the Labour leader appeared to mutter: ‘What a complete w*****.’ His office later denied he had made the comment.