its a polemic statement, that highlights a valid issues. In 2013 Corbyn described Chavez as "an inspiration to all of us fighting back against austerity and neoliberal economics in Europe" (what does that tell us about his thoughts on the EU?). He visited Chavez & Maduro multiple times, shared plattforms with them, praised them, lobbied for them and appeared in their propaganda channels. In 2017, when the regime openly fought its own people on the street and de-facto abolished the parliament, he condemed violence on both sides and praised the regime for their success in ending poverty and analphabism. He praised them for their fight against POVERTY, while most of the citizens are litterarily starving. He couldn't bring himself to condem the regime without creating a false equivalence between the violence of the protesters and the state.
It is true that the Labour party doesn't embrace the ideals of the Venezuelan socialism; most of Labour's voters don't want anything to do with this nonsense. Both his own party and the british institutions fortunately put huge constraints on Corbyn and push him towards the center. Even if he manages to become the PM, he'd be unable to go "socialismo del siglo XXI". Still his vision of running a country is a lot closer to that of Venezuela than its to any modern european liberal democracy (incl. scandinavian social democracy). Of course nowadays its not sexy anymore to be associated with Venezuela. So pointing out his huge love-in for this regime is "unfair smear". Its always smear and apparently we are missing some context, when in reality its cristal clear what he meant. The good thing about Corbyn is, that he was never afraid to be pretty forthcoming about his rather extreme ideas before he became leader of his party.
