The Labour Left’s long love affair with basket-case communists leaves Starmer squirming

Sir Keir Starmer’s initial squirming response to the US attack on Venezuela draws on the Left’s long love affair with the communist country.

Fearful of angering the US President but also conscious of his party’s respect for the failed regime of Nicolas Maduro, the Prime Minister was forced to say that he wanted to ‘get the facts out and go from there’.

‘I have been a lifelong advocate of international law,’ he told the BBC, before tiptoeing around a diplomatic tightrope by saying the relationship between the US and the UK was ‘vital to our defence, security and intelligence’. ‘It’s my responsibility to make sure the relationship works.’

Privately, officials are more forthright. A diplomat told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We know the US is war-gaming about ‘decapitating’ the Venezuelan regime and the simulation predicts chaos.

This is a recipe for anarchy, but they seem paralyzed at number 10; basically just sitting there going ‘What the hell?’ they say. ‘They should now call for the United Nations to monitor the elections there.’

Later last night Sir Keir aligned himself more closely with Mr Trump, saying: “We viewed Maduro as an illegitimate president and shed no tears over the end of his regime.” But he knows that his party’s Left has long admired the communist regime and hated Mr. Trump.

Jeremy Corbyn was inspired by Venezuela’s policies of public ownership and price control as he led Labor to the 2017 and 2019 general elections.

Mr Corbyn once described Maduro’s predecessor, the infamous Hugo Chavez, as ‘an inspiration to all of us fighting against austerity and neo-liberal economics’. When Chavez died in 2013, Mr Corbyn attended a memorial service and thanked him for ‘showing that the poor and the rich can be shared’.

Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro (pictured on August 22, 2025) was captured by the US military

President Donald Trump stands next to CIA Director John Ratcliffe as he monitors the US military operation in Venezuela

Your party’s interim leader, Jeremy Corbyn, speaks at a press conference on 18 December 2025

But Chavez’s rigid Marxism led to empty shelves, power outages, and the suppression of human rights and freedom of expression. While more than a million people left the country, some of the hungry had to eat cats.

Venezuela, once the richest country in South America, seized the assets of foreign oil producers and diverted their profits to social programs, causing the collapse of the oil industry, hyperinflation, and the destruction of the tax base needed to fund public services.

Maduro continued the same economically illiterate dictatorship. While inflation reached 230 percent last year, the economy has shrunk 75 percent since 2012.

In November, Mr Corbyn warned against US military intervention in Venezuela, and Maduro’s government was happy to do so.

Mr Corbyn, now the motley leader of your party, described the attack as ‘unprovoked and illegal… a brazen attempt to secure control over Venezuela’s natural resources’. ‘It is an act of war that puts the lives of millions of people at risk and must be condemned.’