IT took Donald Trump about two hours to neutralise Venezuela’s air defences, capture its leader and take control of the country.
While this was happening, Sir Keir Starmer was tucked up in bed in his Mr Man pyjamas. Nobody had let him know what was going to take place.
You can imagine the scene in Mar-a-Lago.
The Donald has a phone in his hand. He looks around at his aides and secretaries and advisers.
“Right, I’m going to give the order to start,” he says. And suddenly there’s a shout from the back of the room.
“No, no, wait, Sir!”
“What is it?” asks the President.
“You haven’t checked with Sir Keir!”
Cue everybody collapsing into hysterical laughter and Trump gives the order.
Never in the history of our two nations have we been more irrelevant. Us and the rest of Europe, of course.
Starmer still looked bleary-eyed the next morning while Nicolas Maduro and his missus were being chaperoned north on a US Airforce jet.
Marxist tyrant
He cobbled together a statement. He didn’t condemn Trump. He distanced the UK from the power-grab.
And he added the usual Starmeresque blather: “I reiterated my support for international law this morning. The UK government will discuss the evolving situation with US counterparts in the days ahead as we seek a safe and peaceful transition to a legitimate government that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people.”
In other words — whisper it quietly — he got it about right. No point in annoying Trump over a course of action which has already taken place.
It was also a tacit admission of two apparently contradictory things.
We all know what they are, but people will utter only one of the two statements, depending upon who they hate the most — Trump or the Venezuelan commies.
The first statement is this. Trump’s actions were, according to international law, quite wrong. Illegal.
Countries should not invade other countries and depose their leaders. Not now, not in Iraq in 2003 either.
And not in Ukraine in 2022 — and that’s a problem for all of us.
Because it is very difficult to label Vladimir Putin a war criminal and not level the same charge at Donald Trump, isn’t it?
In a rather horrible way, Trump’s incursion into Venezuela will legitimise the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in the mind of Putin at least.
But the second point is this — and it is just as important, if not more so. Trump’s coup in Venezuela is very, very good for Venezuela.
Its people have been freed from a despotic Marxist tyrant who has reduced his country to penury.
It is probably good for the world, too, in the longer scheme of things.
The Labour Left nutters, the Greens, the genuinely deranged Islamist/transgender alliance of Your Party
Which is why Starmer was right when he said that he would be shedding no tears for the removal of the Maduro regime.
And I suspect there will be a certain nervousness at large in Havana over the next few days. Cuba is another Yankee-hating Marxist dictatorship.
The Americans, via its military and the CIA, have been trying to overthrow the Castro dynasty for six decades. I wonder if Trump will be the President who finally succeeds?
But here is Starmer’s problem. His party is stuffed full of maniacs. I know you knew that. I just think the fact needs reiterating.
Because Starmer is perfectly capable of giving in to the maniacs — he’s done it before.
And they have all been out in force since Trump launched his action in Caracas.
Mrs Fruitcake issued a statement describing the US actions as being ‘imperialist’
Rod Liddle
The Labour Left nutters, the Greens, the genuinely deranged Islamist/transgender alliance of Your Party.
The fabulously dim-witted Labour MP Richard Burgon is already demanding that Starmer condemn Trump for his violence against a socialist country.
The Green’s clown of a leader Zack Polanski was frothing at the mouth, meanwhile.
“After years of arming a genocide and worshipping the ‘special relationship’, Trump now believes he can act with impunity,” he ranted, demanding Starmer do something.
Magic Grandpa Jeremy Corbyn got in on the act. As did his hated co-leader Zarah Sultana.
Mrs Fruitcake issued a statement describing the US actions as being “imperialist”.
She still thinks she’s in a polytechnic common room.
The reason they make these statements is that not only do they hate Trump, which is a given, but they actually think Maduro was doing a bloody good job in Venezuela.
Indeed, Venezuela is, for them, a model socialist country. If only we could be more like it! They have been saying the same thing for nearly two decades now. Viva Venezuela! And Cuba!
Let’s look at this madness in a bit more detail. Venezuela was once one of South America’s peaceful, affluent and democratic countries.
It has vast oil reserves and would be a brilliant tourist destination were it not for the fact that Maduro, and his mentalist predecessor Hugo Chavez, have completely destroyed the place.
Grotesque misery
Some eight million Venezuelans have fled the country. Its people are starving.
It is a country which between 2013 and 2025 lost 80 per cent of its GDP through monetary malpractice, stupidity and the imposition of socialist theory.
At one point in 2018 its inflation was running at 136,060 per cent.
Whatever way you look at Venezuela, it has been a catastrophic failure on a scale previously unimagined. It makes the Weimar Republic resemble modern-day Singapore.
And at the same time as ruining the country, Maduro also stripped it of its democracy, gerrymandering election results.
That is the sort of country the likes of Burgon, Corbyn, Polanski and Mrs Fruitcake would like us to emulate.
Just as they have a soft spot for the economic basket case of Cuba and the one-party theocracy of Iran.
Some of them even have a soft spot for the monstrous one-party communist dictatorship in North Korea.
They are grandstanding adolescents, then. The grotesque misery these awful countries have wreaked upon their people means nothing to them.
Because however stunningly useless they are, they keep the red flag flying.
Let us be glad that Maduro has gone. And next time you have half an idea about voting Labour, or Green, or for Mrs Fruitcake, look at Venezuela and remember.