Hot On The Cuban Heels

So much for Jeremy Corbyn's being a Trotskyist, then, if he is indeed going to Fidel Castro's funeral.

As, come to that, is a Minister in the present British Government, Sir Alan Duncan.

Theresa May has not said a word on the death of Castro. Not one word.

In any case, Tony Blair dropped everything and dashed to Riyadh when King Fahd died, while David Cameron lowered the flags to half-mast for King Abdullah.

Castro had nothing on either of them.

If you want a definition of "Mob rule", then it is the electoral influence in Florida of the old retainers of the Mafia in Cuba, who have even managed to advance the demand that Cuba compensate the loss of the assets of organised crime.

Latin America and the Caribbean are rising, and we have a potential Prime Minister who already knows more people of importance or influence there than the present Prime Minister has ever met.

In British politics, only the Left has ever taken much of an interest in that region. Or in many parts of Asia. Or in the Less Bad Guy parts of the Middle East.

Or in Africa, at least since the fall of the white supremacist regimes in the South that the decisive Cuban intervention in Angola did so much to bring down by shattering the myth of white invincibility.

Or even in post-Soviet Russia, very much.

Reminders of the Cuban Missile Crisis in recent days have been reminders of just how long Turkey has been in NATO. Since 1952, in fact, but without ever having been any kind of bastion of democracy.

But then, nor was Salazar's Portugal, however fondly many Portuguese may remember him. And that was a founder member of the NATO into which the Attlee Government took the United Kingdom.

You can place anyone by whether they regard that Government's domestic or its foreign policy as an object of contemporary emulation. No one ever does both.