Ken Livingstone has backed President Maduro and accused an “establishment elite” of playing a part in Venezuela’s economic decline.
The former Labour London mayor, 72, highlighted claims of meddling by the owners of domestic companies and the US to explain why the nation was on the verge of bankruptcy.
President Maduro has claimed victory in a vote, condemned by critics as a sham, for a constituent assembly that is expected to hand his ruling Socialist Party more power.
Opposition politicians boycotted the ballot and millions of Venezuelans shunned the process.
Asked if he supported President Maduro and the nation’s Bolivarian revolution, Mr Livingstone told The Times yesterday: “Oh God, yes.”
Before annoucing his bid for the Labour leadership in 2015, Jeremy Corbyn praised the politics of Venezuela as “a cause for celebration”. He has been less forthcoming since.
The country’s economy has shrunk by a third since 2014 and is expected to contract by 12 per cent this year. Shortages of basic items are common.
Mr Livingstone said that Venezuela’s economic malaise stemmed in part from its reliance on its oil reserves which made it vulnerable to the crash in oil prices, but suggested that other factors had also contributed.
“Hugo Chávez did not execute the establishment elite, he allowed them to continue so they’re still there. I think there’s a lot of rumours they’ve been blocking the important food and medicines and things like that because they control a lot of the companies,” he said. “And America has got a long record of undermining any leftwing government as well. So I suspect it’s not all just down to the problems of the [Venezuelan] government.”
In 2006 when he was mayor of London, Mr Livingstone played host to Chávez at an event at City Hall. He struck a deal with Venezuela in which it agreed to provide £16 million of oil each year to Transport for London to fund cheap travel for the UK capital’s poor, in exchange for British expertise in traffic management and urban planning.
Boris Johnson scrapped the oil deal in 2008 and his spokesman called it a “morally bankrupt approach” for one of the globe’s richest cities to accept resources from one of its poorest nations.
On Sunday the US state department said it stood “by the people of Venezuela and their constitutional representatives in their quest to restore their country to a full and prosperous democracy. We will continue to take strong and swift actions against the architects of authoritarianism in Venezuela, including those who participate in the National Constituent Assembly as a result of today’s flawed election.”
Mr Livingstone is under a two-year “administrative suspension” from the Labour Party, set to end in April, after his claim that Hitler had supported Zionism before he “went mad and ended up killing six million Jews” was found to have broken party rules.