"If all that's true, it would be appalling, but I have watched America impose sanctions… an appalling impact on their country" @ken4london on how Alan Johnson & Esther McVey reacted to his #bbctw film

"As we speak tonight, children in #Venezuela are starving to death" @afneil pic.twitter.com/Bl8zJfRZF7

— BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) February 1, 2019

Ken Livingstone made the brave choice of going on This Week to make a film explaining why “my friend Hugo Chavez” wasn’t responsible for the economic misery that has been wrought upon Venezuela and it’s all America’s fault instead. It’s almost worth watching just for Ken’s opening line of “Remember me? I used to be Mayor of London”…

Predictably, Ken’s bogus arguments were completely torn apart by Andrew Neil afterwards, with a hapless Livingstone reduced to saying: “I don’t know, I’m a retired pensioner, I don’t have staff providing the information”. His only defence after that was that the Venezuelan ambassador had told him it was true. At least he wasn’t quoting the anti-Semitic historical revisionist ‘UN rapporteur’ that Chris Williamson is so keen on…

Brillo then did the public service of explaining to Ken some of the real reasons why Venezuela is a basket case, including decades of self-enriching dictatorship, random confiscation of private property, price controls, and putting a loyalist army General in charge of the national oil company. Ken’s probably wishing he’d stayed in retirement…

“Let me suggest some other reasons why #Venezuela is a basket case” @afneil

“Decades of dictatorship” says @ken4london on previous US involvement in Latin America #bbctw

Here’s Ken’s film: https://t.co/38CNrnTNai pic.twitter.com/zTKxkdCmi5

— BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) February 1, 2019