If he doesn’t continue to decline I’ll be withdrawing my support from the Labour Party, writing to him and the Unite Union to explain one or two reasons why Thornberry et al should keep their gobs shut.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Russia-Helps-Venezuela-Fight-Oppositions-Economic-War-20170605-0023.html

Flawed, but better than the alternative! If the US don’t get the result they want next year: that is when they will go peak regime change, I suspect.
Back home, I see Thornberry and Eagle each put a drop of poison in the chalice: and tried to get Corbyn to drink from it and condemn the Maduro government. He would do well to continue to decline.

Excellent points. The country is still infested with Latifundia. An immediate, radical and comprehensive land reform would not only undercut the bases of oligarchy but also solve supply problems.
In the mean time I have no doubt that contra-guerrilla bands, armed to the teeth and earning vast salaries have been sneaked over the Guyanese and Colombian borders to undertake the normal ‘regime change’ operations (see Libya and Syria, Ukraine etc).
It is essential that Corbyn not allow himself to be panicked by the right wing Blairite scum (to put it very mildly) who in Colombia sided with the death squads and para-militaries, sponsored by the US and the narco-feudalists against FARC.
Labour would do well to send a mission of enquiry to Caracas to meet with, inter alia, Trade Union and Socialist parties and educate the people on history of the region and the aspirations and achievements of the (flawed though it may be) Bolivarian government.

Of course, the other problem (with no sovereign income) is foreign debt. If China-Russia could find a way to restructure/write-down foreign debt; so that loans became available to the people – not just creditors: that would be the really humanitarian thing to do. 🙂

Indeed, the realpolitik of the situation is that Russian and Chinese investment is more humane (I’ve taken my environmentalist hat off for the day!) If US corpo-fascism were to get in: overnight 95+% of the people would become disposable. Including the ones that are currently rioting for US intervention. Land reform would be stopped and the people made dependant on imported USAID. They might get toilet paper back on the shelves, but that is the only benefit I can see!

“Capitalism and Socialism don’t mix. The neoliberal ‘Third Way’ (“capitalism with a human face” – Hugo Chavez) offers the worst of both worlds.”
Couldn’t agree more. Such hopes as I have rest in the main on the challenge to US imperialism from China and Russia. It’s not that I see those two as more humane, just that the world desperately needs a counterbalance to the most dangerous empire the world has ever known.