What the commentators said

Putting the squeeze on a “bad man running a bad regime” is a cheering move on the face of it, said Edward Lucas in The Times. And if the Us-led bandwagon succeeds in toppling Maduro, it will be seen as a job well done. But imagine what might happen if Maduro hangs on, Russia sends in “private military contractors” to shore him up and the Chinese bail him out. Would the US then commit sufficient military force to support Guaidó? If so, we should expect to see another botched US military venture in another oil-rich, ill-run state. Venezuela is not Iraq, but “the strains an impetuous US president’s foreign-policy gambit puts on the Western alliance are all too familiar”. One might also ask why a man “happy to hobnob” with a North Korean despot chooses to get indignant about this particular foreign problem. Hard not to suspect that Trump is seeking a “convenient distraction from his botched domestic agenda, and dressing it up with talk of freedom, democracy and human rights”. On the contrary, his intervention “has been decisive, subtle and effective”, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. He realises the US role in this crisis is to lead “from behind”, to allow for “a Latin American solution to a Latin American problem”. Trump now represents the “best chance out of this mess”.

Part of the UK government’s strategy in all this, said Patrick Wintour in The Guardian, has been to highlight Labour’s ideological embrace of Venezuela’s socialist regime. “If Maduro’s policies result in 82% of population in poverty,” as Jeremy Hunt tweeted last week, “there is just the tiniest clue what Corbyn’s policies might do to Britain”. Yet it isn’t socialism per se that is at issue here, said Ian Birrell in the I newspaper. After all, Bolivia, under Evo Morales, its radical socialist president, has the fastest-growing economy in Latin America. No, Venezuela’s tragedy was caused by the “bunch of thugs” who have run the country for the benefit of their pals. Corbyn’s crime is to have let tribal loyalty blind him to their “cruelty and criminality”.