Venezuela has long been the poster boy for Britain’s far left. They loved the former leader Hugo Chávez and when his successor, Nicolás Maduro, was elected, Jeremy Corbyn extended his congratulations. His shadow justice secretary even hailed it as a “victory for the Labour movement”. Now, as the crisis accelerates, with Venezuela’s economy in a state of collapse, Labour is oddly reticent. Only Ken Livingstone, who can usually be relied upon to say something that ends up in a newspaper, has spoken out.
The former London mayor told The Times that Venezuela’s problems were down to its “establishment elite” who, enraged at the dawning of a socialist utopia, had been hard at work sabotaging it. If Chávez could be blamed for anything, he said, it was that he “did not execute” them while he had the chance.
This view is at odds with that of most people with a knowledge of the country. When Chávez came to power, Venezuela was a wealthy nation due to its abundant natural resources. It is now so poor that hospitals cannot afford basic medicines, and water and electricity are rationed. According to the aid agency Caritas, 11.4 per cent of children under five are suffering either from moderate or severe acute malnutrition. When Chávez nationalised industry, productivity plummeted. When he put price controls on bread and other basic goods, small businesses stopped selling them rather than absorb losses, resulting in drastic shortages. Market distortions fed corruption, from which the poor, unable to afford bribes, suffered the most.
Even some of Chávez’s most zealous devotees have concluded that the relationship is now harming their brand. In May last year Pablo Iglesias, who leads Spain’s far-left Podemos party, and who even served as an adviser to Chávez, said that the situation in Venezuela was terrible. A leaked strategic memo from the party earlier in the year commanded everyone to back away slowly from the country.
The far-left French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who once ran on a manifesto suggesting that France could join Chávez’s Bolivarian Alliance, has toned down his support. The left-wing former Uruguayan president José Mujica recently called Mr Maduro as “loco” as a hatter.
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It may be that Labour’s leaders continue to revere the revolutionary regime in Caracas. The comradely relations are of long standing. When Chávez visited Westminster in 2006, he made a dig at Mr Corbyn’s Blairite enemies. Elsewhere Mr Corbyn has been able to use the country as a useful lesson: “Chávez showed us that there is a different and a better way of doing things,” he said, speaking at the leader’s funeral. “It’s called socialism.”
There is a sense in which Mr Corbyn’s words are half right. Venezuela’s catastrophe is not the result of a natural disaster or even an external shock like falling oil prices. It is due to discredited socialist economic policies chosen by a regime that has learnt nothing from failure and that now casts around for scapegoats.
Yesterday Venezuela’s authorities seized two opposition leaders from their homes, where they were already under house arrest. Repression of opponents and independent institutions, along with the falsification of official statistics, are the remaining means to enforce policies that fail. The socialist system has put a nation on the fast track to penury. Meanwhile, Labour falls silent.