Do we want a socialist society?

When will the hard-line Brextremists in the Tory party start to wake up to reality? Their incompetent plotting to  replace Mrs May with their self-interested selves has achieved nothing except to further weaken her and the Conservatives, just at the moment we need strong leadership.

We desperately need a trade deal with the EU. The Brexiteer windbags have demonstrated how difficult it is to make trade deals. Their entire platform was based on trade and immigration, yet since the referendum they haven't even managed to make deals with countries we already trade with. If they can't get current partners to agree to 'roll over' existing deals, how are they going to manage to make new deals? Send Boris "Gaffmeister" Johnson in?

It isn't only the Brexit negotiations that should worry them. Their constant undermining of their party leader, Mrs May, is a gift to the opposition. If they stampede her into an unplanned Brexit with no trade deals and the sudden imposition of tariffs on trade then the electorate will punish them, and we could end up with Mr Corbyn as PM.

I have voted  Labour in the past, and hope to do so in the future, but right now the Labour party is in the hands of extremists and disconnected with reality as the Brexiteer chorus line. The shadow chancellor, Mr McDonnell, has stated,"I want a socialist society", and says that to do that he must overthrow capitalism. I have seen the effects of too many revolutions to vote for his. In particular, his support for the socialism experiment in Venezuela is deeply worrying.

More worrying still is that his views are echoed by the Labour shadow home secretary, Mrs Abbot, their strategist, Mr Milne, who said Venezuela held “lessons to anyone interested in social justice and new forms of socialist politics”, and of course Mr Corbyn himself.

What lessons are to be drawn from Venezuela? There are many: fixing the price of basic goods (such as bread) leads to shortages; printing money leads to inflation (expected to hit 13,000% this year);

However the most important lesson is Mr McDonnell's reaction to the disaster that is Venezuela. He now says, "I think in Venezuela they took a wrong turn, a not particularly effective path, not a socialist path."

In other words, Venezuela was a socialist state when socialist policies were being implemented, but once things went off the rails it was no longer socialist - even though the same policies were still in place.

Of course, if only they had taken the right path all would have been fine. So what was the right path? Mr McDonnell again: "All the objectives of Chavez […] would have been successful if they had mobilised the oil resources to actually invest in the long term".

In other words, keep throwing money at it. Maybe that really would have made it all work. In the UK we have a minimum wage and social security, and some (democratic capitalist) countries are experimenting with a universal basic income. Money can certainly make or break policies.

Which is why I don't want Labour to take control after a disastrous Brexit. Our economy will be damaged - possibly badly damaged - and the one thing we won't have is any spare money.

I am a socialist who is aware of history. Together with Venezuela, other socialist states have been the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Tanzania and Nicaragua. Not one of them is a place I would rush to live in or wish to copy.