Mick Hartley

Madeline Grant in the Times (£) – Labour’s flirtation with dogma will cost us dear. From communist ideology to failed economics of the 1970s, Corbynism would be toxic for UK:

Away from the Brexit arena, bad ideas are on the march. Last week leading Labour MPs including the shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the shadow business secretary Laura Pidcock attended an anti-austerity rally in London. Aside from the usual array of Socialist Worker placards and shouts of “Tory scum”, there was the alarming sight of communist flags on full display.

These weren’t your run-of-the-mill, unreformed communists either. They carried the logo of the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), a splinter group made up of bona fide Stalinists.

No one can choose which lunatics appear in the background of every photo but the keeping of this kind of company is becoming common among senior Labour figures. McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn have given speeches under CPB-ML banners. The opposition leader’s closest advisers include not just self-avowed Marxists but a decades-long member of the Communist Party of Britain and even a defender of Stalin. The rot goes deeper than the unfortunate images from last week’s march.

Such incidents attract depressingly little attention. If Tory ministers were spotted on platforms alongside neo-Nazis you would expect outrage from voters and pleas for forgiveness from the MPs concerned. So far, there’s been not a peep out of the Labour MPs who attended last week’s rally. Call me old fashioned but it should be a matter of national shame that symbols of poverty, repression and mass murder no longer elicit the disgust and horror they deserve.

Chris Williamson, a pro-Corbyn Labour backbencher, recently tweeted in praise of Venezuela’s social housing programme (currently at 550 “likes” and counting). By trying to put a gloss on the South American country’s humanitarian tragedy, he merely echoes the behaviour of communist apologists who used to praise the Soviet Union’s record on female participation in the workforce while overlooking “trivial” matters like the gulags and man-made famines. With millions fleeing Venezuela, it’s perhaps unsurprising that housing demand has fallen….

With perfect timing, Revolution in Ruins: The Hugo Chavez Story features on BBC2 tonight.