The Venezuelan regime’s decision to unleash paramilitary groups on opposition protestors has revealed to the world yet again the moral bankruptcy of socialism. It also shows Jeremy Corbyn’s utter hypocrisy; he parrots on about universal human rights but is not prepared to speak out against the thugs who run Venezuela, a nation of almost 32 million people.

We have been here before with socialist ideology but some people never learn. The Russian famine of 1921-22 was a direct result of Lenin’s collectivist policies. It led to around five million deaths. Between 1958 and 1962, Mao Tse-tung’s Great Leap Forward in China – a socialist project to industrialise the country – resulted in 45 million killed.

In the late Seventies under Pol Pot, two million perished in Cambodia during attempts to collectivise the countryside.

Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and our very own Jeremy Corbyn have one thing in common: an admiration of Karl Marx. They all believe that systemic economic change can only take place through class struggle.