Marxist mirage

SIR – John Mcdonnell, the Marxist shadow chancellor, has suggested that Venezuela under Hugo Chávez was a well-functioning socialist economy.

This demonstrates the almost infinite human capacity for selfdeception and denial of all rational evidence when it counters one’s own long-held beliefs.

It also shows that this behaviour is not just confined to those for whom the tenets of fundamentalist religion are facts. Michael R Gordon

Bewdley, Worcestershire