The Left's Permanent Alliance With Tyranny The Western Left is trapped in a pattern that no failure ever corrects. It is not ignorance. It is not naivety. It is a habit of mind – a reflex so ingrained it now operates without thought. Wherever power sets itself against the West, the Left leans toward it. Wherever a regime defines itself in opposition to America, Britain, or Israel, the Left suspends its moral faculties and rebrands that abdication "principle". Venezuela is only the latest proof. The collapse of Nicolás Maduro's regime should have been uncontroversial. A bankrupt state. A stolen election. A population driven into exile by hunger, fear, and repression. A dictatorship propped up by force and foreign patrons. Yet the British Left responded not with relief, but with rage – not at the tyrant, but at the country that removed him. The moment the United States acted, the verdict was fixed. Whatever followed was irrelevant. This is not a lapse. It is a pattern. For half a century, the British Left has attached itself to strongmen and movements whose only consistent trait is hostility to the West. Castro, Mao, Chavez, Saddam, Hamas, Iran – the names change, the instinct does not. Each was excused, romanticised, or rebranded as "resistance" while their victims were written off as collateral or lies. The logic is brutally simple. The Left no longer judges regimes by how they treat their people. It judges them by whom they oppose. If a government crushes dissent, rigs elections, jails opponents, or starves its population, that is unfortunate but negotiable. If it also defines itself against America, that brutality becomes contextual, even admirable. Tyranny is forgiven so long as it points in the right direction. That is why Jeremy Corbyn can call on Britain to "stand with Venezuela" while Venezuelans flee by the million. Why Diane Abbott can thunder about international law when Washington acts, yet fall silent when regimes gun down protesters. Why Ken Livingstone could fawn over Hugo Chávez even as Venezuela slid toward ruin. The people on the receiving end never matter. The alignment does. This is why the Left's supposed anti-imperialism is a sham. American power is condemned as predatory, but Chinese expansion is waved through as development. Washington's influence is treated as neocolonialism, while Beijing's ports, mines, and debt traps are ignored. Xi Jinping builds a global empire and escapes scrutiny because his project weakens the West. That alone is enough. Donald Trump's role in Venezuela only sharpens the reflex. Because Donald Trump acted, the act itself must be illegitimate. Trump is incidental. Had another American president done the same thing, the language would soften. When Trump does it, legality is rediscovered, sovereignty invoked, and dictators recast as victims. The rule is absolute: America must always be wrong. This is not moral seriousness. It is inversion. Good and evil are not weighed; they are assigned. Freedom movements backed by the West are dismissed as puppets. Authoritarian regimes opposed to the West are treated as misunderstood. The Left does not fail to see oppression. It sees it and looks away, because acknowledging it would disrupt the story it tells itself about history, power, and blame. The tragedy is not that the Left keeps backing lost causes. It is that it keeps backing the wrong side of human suffering. Again and again, it chooses ideology over people, posture over truth, and grievance over liberty. Venezuela strips away the last excuse. What remains is a political culture that would rather see a country burn than concede that the West might sometimes be right – and it will not stop. "That is why Jeremy Corbyn can call on Britain to "stand with Venezuela" while Venezuelans flee by the million."