ES Views: Why won’t Jeremy Corbyn come clean on Venezuela?

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Jeremy Corbyn has come under fire for his stance on Venezuela
PA
11 August 2017
WEST END FINAL

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Matthew d’Ancona is broadly right about Jeremy Corbyn [“Venezuela goes to the heart of Corbyn’s fitness to become PM”, Comment, August 9]. However, the issue is not just about whose actions should be condemned in Venezuela now.

Corbyn had no ministerial or other executive experience before becoming one of the main party leaders. This is not the first time such a thing has happened, but in the circumstances his past expressions of opinion are our only guide to what goes on in his mind.

Things he said not long before he became leader, such as praising Hugo Chavez’s record in Venezuela, are much more reliable in this respect than what he has said as leader, with the help of high-powered spin doctors.

Does Corbyn now regret supporting the early years of Venezuela’s descent and still think that this is the right way to run a country? We not only have a right to ask, we also need to know the answer — for the sake of our country’s future.
Andy Thompson


The condemnation of Jeremy Corbyn by Matthew d’Ancona is not totally unexpected or perhaps undeserved. Younger voters need only look in the history books to understand how South America has suffered under its numerous dictatorships.

The Right — and the Conservative Party in particular — are far from squeaky clean in their support for dictators. Margaret Thatcher’s close personal support for Chile’s General Pinochet and his regime, which inflicted decades of abductions, torture and murders, was in a different league altogether. I wonder how often Mrs Thatcher’s fitness to be Prime Minister was questioned?

The Left, it seems, can do no right.
Alan Young


Matthew d’Ancona is spot-on about Jeremy Corbyn — his double standards are staggering. If he and Vince Cable had been arrested in the middle of the night would he describe Theresa May’s regime as anything other than despotic?

His inability to express disgust at Venezuela’s slide into dictatorship and its complete economic mismanagement and pervasive corruption tells you everything you need to know.
Chris Key

Had Jeremy Corbyn not previously expressed support for Hugo Chavez and his successors, I doubt whether events in Venezuela would even be reported by the British media. Venezuela is simply the latest rod to beat Corbyn with.

If anything, this is a sign of the desperation of those who can see an election in the next six months that could place Corbyn in Downing Street.
Paul Donovan


US should not have threatened Korea

President Trump has promised to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea while his Defense Secretary Jim Mattis threatened “the destruction of its people”. No decent person could ever threaten genocide, yet Britain’s Ambassador to the UN says we stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Trump. How did it come to this?
Will Podmore


The American people will expect any president to defend their nation and, if there is any conflict, Britain has to be at America’s side as its closest ally. We are not neutral in this situation, and to pretend we are is hypocritical.
James Young


By almost declaring war on North Korea the US is essentially trying to act as a global policeman. Maybe it would be best if it focused on its own problems and stopped trying to run the world?

Edward Mitchell


Financial future is always a mystery

What a wonderful article by Russell Lynch commenting on what the worldwide economic crisis has brought us over the past 10 years [Business, August 9]. As he rightly identifies, in 2007 no one forecasted accurately what would happen economically over 10 months, let alone 10 years.

He finishes by asking whether the next decade will be any better. The answer may be in his article, where over the past 10 years the UK’s economic growth of 10.9 per cent has compared unfavourably to Australia’s 28 per cent, Canada’s 17 per cent and the 14.8 per cent advanced by the US, but favourably with the eurozone’s 5.4 per cent.

In 10 years he might be vindicated in commencing a news story with “despite Brexit”.
David R J Smith


Private sector has no place in prisons

Why does your correspondent [Letters, August 9] think the private sector is the answer to running the prison service? Prisons are a public service and should be run as such. They also need to offer rewarding work and a long-term career structure if they are to attract the right people — and therein lies the current problem.

It is probably necessary to rethink the current structure, but adding a layer for private companies to profit from should not be part of it.
Jacqueline Castles


Let theatregoers drink from glasses

I agree with those campaigning to end Big Brother-style rules that force theatregoers to drink out of plastic cups [“It’s not 1984 — let us drink out of glasses, plead theatre fans”, August 8].

I visited the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia recently and thousands of people were drinking out of glasses with no hint of trouble — and the beer tasted better. If it’s OK at a beer festival, it is good enough for the theatre.
Jonathan Bullock MEP, Ukip spokesman on Heritage and Tourism

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