On January 23 the long-running political crisis in Venezuela took on a new character when Juan Guaidó, who had recently been installed as president of the country’s opposition-led National Assembly, declared himself interim president of Venezuela, in an attempt to oust the incumbent, Nicolás Maduro.

On Twitter, Donald Trump announced that his administration would officially recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s president, and was soon followed by Canada. In recent days the leading states of the European Union released a common statement announcing that they too would recognize Guaidó if elections were not declared within eight days.

Guaidó’s move has been broadly condemned by the international left as an attempted coup, with members of parliament from the Labour left condemning the move as an attempt at “regime change” in a letter to the Guardian. This, however, has done little to impede the move against Maduro’s government by the West, with the latest escalation of sanctions resulting in the Bank of England refusing to allow the withdrawal of $1.2 billion worth of gold the Bolivarian Republic had stored in its vaults.