by New Worker correspondent
London comrades joined thousands of others in Whitehall to protest against the American raid on Caracas and the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife. At the rally speakers denounced Trump’s blatant disregard for international law and called for the people of the world to stand together against this latest example of imperialist aggression. Speakers were also calling for Starmer to condemn these breaches of international law, but frankly that’s a long way away at the moment.
Starmer has refused to condemn the seizure of Maduro who has been taken to New York on trumped up charges that include drug-dealing and “narco-terrorism”. But former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who now heads the Independent Alliance bloc in the House of Commons, says “I am not alone in finding the UK government’s response utterly pathetic. The failure to stand up to the United States is not just symbolic. By refusing to stand up for international law, the UK has given the green light to the United States to act with impunity. Venezuela first. Who’s next? Is there anything the United States could do that would warrant condemnation from our government? Unfortunately, given that the UK and the US have spent the past two years enabling the genocide in Gaza together, I am not sure there is any point appealing to hypothetical limits of morality.
“As Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico, said this week, ‘The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: intervention has never brought democracy, never generated well-being, nor lasting stability. Only the people can build their own future, decide their path, exercise sovereignty over their natural resources, and freely define their form of government.’
“The story of US-led foreign interventions is a story of chaos, instability and misery. How many more of these catastrophic failures do we need before we learn the lesson? And what will it take for the UK to finally defend a consistent, ethical foreign policy based on international law, sovereignty and peace?”.
