105 dead... but Corbyn STILL won’t condemn Venezuelan pals
JEREMY Corbyn faced calls to apologise last night for ‘giving succour’ to Venezuela’s violent socialist dictatorship.
The Labour leader, who championed Venezuela as a socialist paradise for years, has remained silent in recent days as the regime launched a violent crackdown on opponents.
Hardline President Nicolas Maduro, who has called Mr Corbyn a ‘friend of Venezuela’, has sparked mass demonstrations in recent days as he attempts to tighten his grip on power.
At least 105 people have been killed in protests against his authoritarian regime since April. Scores of opposition politicians have been locked up and the economy is in freefall – despite the country’s oil wealth – with inflation running at over 700 per cent and shortages of basic goods.
Work and Pensions Secretary David Gauke yesterday called on Mr Corbyn to apologise for his support for the regime.
He added: ‘It must be clear, even to Mr Corbyn, that they have destroyed Venezuela’s economy and democracy and ordinary Venezuelans are suffering. It is high time Mr Corbyn publicly recognises this and apologises for giving succour to this appalling regime.’ Even Labour MPs have urged their party leader to speak out.
Graham Jones, chairman of a new all-party parliamentary group on Venezuela, said: ‘All Labour MPs, including Jeremy should be at a position where we should condemn Venezuela, because I think there needs to be international action now.’
Fellow Labour MP Angela Smith said she was appalled by the ‘wilful destruction of democratic structures’ by the Maduro regime, adding: ‘I hope my party leadership will as soon as possible condemn what’s happening in the country and call for the release of opposition party political prisoners.’
Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan also condemned Mr Corbyn’s silence, saying: ‘It is astonishing when the world is condemning Venezuela and its government we don’t hear a squeak from the leader of the opposition who for 20 years has said he is a great friend of Venezuela.’
Labour last night said Mr Corbyn would not be commenting on the deteriorating situation in Venezuela because he is on holiday in Croatia. Instead, the party pointed to a statement issued by junior foreign affairs spokesman Liz McInnes over the weekend. She said: ‘ We mourn all those who have been killed and injured in the protests leading up to this election, and we urge everyone in Venezuela, on all sides, to end the bloodshed immediately.
‘The outcome of this election cannot be treated as a mandate for a further escalation of repression, division, and violence.’
However, Mr Corbyn’s holiday has not prevented him from wading into less important issues.
On Tuesday, he issued a statement saying he was ‘disgusted’ by the involvement of Arsenal football club owner Stan Kroenke in the creation of a TV channel dedicated to big game hunting. But the Labour leader has not found time to comment on human rights
‘Ordinary people are suffering’
abuses in the country he has long seen as a socialist beacon.
Mr Corbyn is a personal acquaintance of Mr Maduro. He shared a platform with him when Mr Maduro visited London in 2006 with predecessor Hugo Chavez. In 2014, Mr Corbyn rang in to the President’s radio show to discuss the death of Tony Benn.
He has suggested Venezuela offers a ‘ better way of doing things’. In 2015, he hailed the country’s record on housing, health and the economy, saying it was ‘a cause for celebration’.
At the time, Mr Corbyn also suggested the regime was being undermined by the CIA in the same way as the presidency of Salvador Allende whose Marxist regime in Chile was ousted in a US-backed coup in 1973.
Mr Corbyn told a meeting of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign: ‘Look at what is happening in Ven- ezuela … is it that different to what happened to the government of Allende in Chile in the 1970s?’
Footage emerged yesterday of Labour’s communications director Seumas Milne also praising the Venezuelan regime.
Alongside Mr Corbyn at a conference on Latin America in 2014, Mr Milne claimed the US government was funding a ‘violent campaign of destabilisation’ aimed at ‘overthrowing a democratically elected regime.’ He also hailed Venezuela as a template for the ‘rebirth of socialism’.
That year, Mr Milne, who was then a Guardian columnist, travelled to Caracas to conduct an interview with Mr Maduro in which he invited him to condemn the US, before asking: ‘I wonder if you could talk about yourself as a person? I hear you’re a keen fan of pop music.’
Several other senior Labour figures, including the shadow home secretary Diane Abbott have also extolled Venezuela as a socialist model for years.
Former Labour frontbencher Michael Dugher last night said it was no surprise the Labour leadership refused to condemn the Venezuelan regime. He added: ‘The problem with Seumas and Co is they think the wrong people won the Cold War.’
IT is an ineluctable truth that wherever socialism has been tried, it has failed. From Albania to the Soviet Union, the real world consequences of Marxist economic dogma have always been catastrophic.
Take Venezuela, a country Jeremy Corbyn has long regarded as a socialist utopia. With its vast oil reserves, it was once among the richest nations in South America. But after years of nationalisation, reckless borrowing and price controls, it is an economic basket case. Hyperinflation… Food shortages… Rampant corruption… Spiralling infant mortality… And now, in the all too predictable pattern of Marxist leaders of the past, a descent into authoritarian rule.
To his shame, Mr Corbyn has clapped along all the way. After the death of his hero, ‘El Commandante’ Hugo Chavez, he said the Venezuelan President had shown ‘there is a different, and better way of doing things. It’s called socialism.’
Two years ago, as the economy collapsed, Mr Corbyn was hailing the current President Nicolas Maduro’s ‘achievements’ in jobs, housing, health and education, calling them a ‘cause for celebration’. This week, Maduro was rounding up opposition leaders, rigging elections and changing the constitution to create a Cuban- style dictatorship. And yet Mr Corbyn is silent, despite commenting on such critical matters as the England women’s football team and the pro-hunting activities of the chairman of Arsenal FC.
Will he now abandon 40 years of hard-Left dogma, admit that socialism never works and renounce this despicable regime? Don’t hold your breath.