Venezuela’s agony is provoking spectacular gymnastics from British Leftists. While the oil price was high enough to cushion that country from the effects of a command economy, Labour hardliners held it up as a workers’ paradise. Now, though, Venezuela has toppled into the abyss: inflation is at 800 per cent, food and medical supplies have run out, blackouts are frequent and the government has awarded itself dictatorial powers.

How have Corbynistas responded? First, they tried denial. The protests were got up by CIA-funded agents provocateurs, they told us. The empty shops were the work of saboteurs. If Hugo Chávez made a mistake, Ken Livingstone said, it was that “he didn’t kill all the oligarchs”.

As the situation deteriorated, denial gave way to displacement. Suddenly, Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, had never been proper socialists at all.

Why, asked Momentum agitators, did Right-wingers keep banging on about Venezuela instead of, say, the NHS? Come off it, comrades: few Britons could place Venezuela on a map before you started lecturing us all about how it was the model to follow.

Now the line has altered again. Led by the columnist Owen Jones, radical Leftists are shifting from displacement to hectoring: “Why do Right-wing hypocrites attack Venezuela when they won’t condemn Saudi Arabia?”

That question is so idiotic that it barely merits a response but, for the record, no Tory has suggested that Britain should emulate Saudi Arabia. Listen, by contrast, to Labour’s hard Left on Venezuela.