Venezuela is in flames and Jeremy Corbyn wants to use this broken nation as his blueprint for Britain
Political rivals are dragged from their homes and 120 protesters murdered on the streets
VENEZUELA is in flames, its once-rich economy is bust, its people starving and its fragile democracy replaced by a vicious Marxist dictatorship.
Who cares? Venezuela is just another faraway country of which we know little.
Well, we should care. The man who is odds-on to be our next Prime Minister wants to use this broken nation as his blueprint for Britain.
Jeremy Corbyn reveres brutal president Nicolas Maduro and his corrupt predecessor Hugo Chavez. Chavez, who died in 2013, “was an inspiration to all of us”, the future Labour leader said in the same year.
Speaking on Venezuelan TV, he insisted: “Chavez showed us there is a different and a better way of doing things. It’s called socialism.”
Today, the capital Caracas is ablaze. Political rivals are dragged from their homes at night, with thousands in jail and 120 protesters murdered on the streets.
Hungry citizens are eating their pets and scavenging rubbish bins for food.
Maduro’s neighbours, the Organization of American States, denounced him last week for setting out to “silence and subdue an entire people”.
Yet not one peep of criticism has been heard from his greatest admirer. Jezza remains silent on holiday.
Unlike his lifelong pal and fellow Marxist “Red Ken” Livingstone, who voices just one regret: “Chavez did not execute the establishment elite.”
Don’t assume he is joking.
Smirking Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who fantasised about executing Tory PM Margaret Thatcher, wants all Labour MPs to swear support for Venezuelan socialism.
So does Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott.
Marxism and communism are two sides of the same blood-stained coin.
We are about to mark the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution and the Soviet tyranny which systematically slaughtered its own citizens.
British Labour Party sympathisers connived with the Kremlin for 30 years to conceal the horrifying truth.
As they remained silent, untold millions of innocent men, women and children were tortured, shot or starved to death in slave labour camps.
A new book by historian Giles Udy, Labour And The Gulag, documents how Labour governments in the Twenties sat on evidence of massacres and famine rather than risk public fury against Russia.
Ministers concealed eyewitness accounts of mass murder, dismissed by the likes of Eliza Doolittle creator George Bernard Shaw as “weeding the garden”.
Even staunch leftie Michael Foot, a future Labour leader, was appalled.
He said: “How deeply the Left craved to give the benefit of all the doubts to Moscow! No one who did not live through that period can appreciate how overwhelming that craving was.”
Finally, in 1945, the Attlee government condemned Russian atrocities.
Marxism was banished. But trade union leaders remained communist. Jack Jones, the most powerful of them all, was on the KGB payroll.
Nobody suggests slaughter on such a scale is going on today. But oppressive regimes such as Castro’s Cuba or Maduro’s Venezuela — always supported by Labour — reveal the same mindset. The villains are always capitalism, the West and, especially, America.
The heroes are some of our worst enemies — the IRA, Hezbollah, Hamas.
Jeremy Corbyn is not as nice as he looks. He pays lip service to peace and goodwill but quietly tolerates ugly, anti-Jewish trolls, blatant vote-rigging and the sinister Momentum plot to purge moderate Labour MPs.
In the Seventies he famously motorcycled around East Germany with lover Diane Abbott. That would not have been possible without the help of the vicious Stasi secret police.
But, hey, who under 40 remembers the Berlin Wall, Joe Stalin, the Red Terror or Russian tanks rolling into Hungary? The UK is an ancient democracy. It couldn’t happen here.
But of course it could. Democracy, free speech and the rule of law are not indestructible. They are under threat right now in Poland, Austria and Turkey.
The USSR was yesterday. Stalin is dead. But Venezuela is today. Marxism is alive and well.
Let’s hope those dewey-eyed “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” millennials who brought Labour so close to power on June 8 are paying attention.
They should be careful what they wish for.
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He fears EU bullying over cash and immigration could force Britain to leave empty-handed, despite our generous £36BILLION offer. So we need to plan for such an emergency immediately.
Thanks to Theresa May’s election fiasco, our negotiators seemed ready to settle for the softest of Brexits, leaving us as EU members in all but name.
So it was good to hear from ex-Downing Street insider Nick Timothy that the PM has not changed her mind. No deal is still better than a bad deal. We need her to say so.
Corbyn’s silence
JEREMY Corbyn used to praise Venezuela for showing the world a better way.
But he’s been silent these last weeks as his Marxist utopia burns.
The Sun today reveals the horrors that have taken hold there as the Labour leader’s paradise becomes hell on Earth.
Where families starve. Where thieves kill for jewellery. Where hospitals are in chaos.
And where President Nicolas Maduro brutally crushes all opposition.
For years Corbyn and his hard-left pals have sought to emulate Venezuela.
Just two years ago he saluted Maduro, saying: “We celebrate the achievements in jobs, in housing, in health, in education, but above all its role in the whole world as a completely different place.”
Venezuela may feel far from home — but what happens there is relevant to us.
We’re seeing the dire consequences of Corbyn’s socialist beliefs in real time.
Socialism always promises fantasy freebies, but it only ever delivers bankruptcy and poverty — followed by oppression and murder.
Corbynistas reckon their hero is a nice man.
But he’s shown his true colours by staying mute about thuggish pal Maduro as he bumps protesters and opponents off.
Venezuela is a stark warning of the hideous damage Corbyn would do here if given half the chance.
Anti-social sites
WE applaud Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield for taking a stand against the dangers of social media.
For too long tech giants like Facebook and YouTube have let filth fester on their sites and done little to purge it.
Now with our kids bingeing online for 15 hours on average a week, it’s vital they face up to their responsibility and make sure their platforms are safe.
Facebook claims it isn’t a publisher, just a free speech platform too big to properly police. Codswallop.
The Commissioner was right to say there’s “so much they could do”.
They should hire extra staff, invest in better technology and make it easier for children to report distressing items.
And they should stop targeting kids with algorithms that get them hooked.
The web giants can’t keep avoiding their responsibility. Our kids are owed better.
Temp tantrum
WHEN will the Government get its finances in order?
It is scandalous when our public services are crying out for cash, Whitehall squandered £4.9billion on consultants and temporary staff last year.
It’s especially shocking that £3.7billion was blown on NHS agency workers.
The Government must do more to train and retain its workers — rather than forking out such vast sums to plug gaps.