Our narrow escape from Corbyn’s utopia

BREAKING a long, embarrassed silence, Jeremy Corbyn finally shares his thoughts on the horrors unfolding in socialist Venezuela – the country he has held up as a model for Britain to emulate.

So does he condemn hard-Left President Maduro, disciple and heir of his hero Hugo Chavez, for the scores of demonstrators this tyrant’s henchmen have killed and the thousands they’ve arrested since he rigged last month’s election to seize unlimited power?

Does the Labour leader denounce the regime that has reduced one of South America’s most prosperous nations to abject poverty, with inflation at 700 per cent, child malnourishment pandemic, hospitals out of medical supplies and the economy shrinking at 18 per cent a year?

Fat chance! In typically weasel words, like those he uses to exculpate his terrorist friends in Ireland and the Middle East, Mr Corbyn regrets all violence ‘by any side’.

As for the poverty inflicted by Chavez and Maduro, he dismisses this as a mere technical slip-up, arising from a failure to diversify Venezuela’s economy away from oil (and never mind that socialism has killed off the non-oil economy too).

With total disregard for reality, Mr Corbyn even praises the regime for its ‘effective and serious attempts’ at reducing poverty and inequality and improving the life chances of the poorest.

Try telling that to families queuing for rice and milk and desperate parents handing starving children to the state.

And this is a man acclaimed by his naive followers for integrity and respect for the truth? What a narrow escape Britain had in the June election!

On Chavez’s death in 2013, Mr Corbyn said: ‘He showed us a different and better way of doing things. It’s called socialism.’

The next time this country goes to the polls, every voter should remember those words – and be warned.