“In so far as I can be said to have had a political training at all, it has been in Marxism.” These are the words of Aneurin Bevan, one of the Labour Party’s most prominent politicians in the twentieth century; a coal miner, a socialist, a driving force in the foundation of the National Health Service (NHS) and, we have discovered in recent weeks, a political hero of Owen Smith.

From cameo appearances in his campaign videos, to his family narrative, and references on the campaign trail, much work has gone into the “Bevanite” image Smith cultivates. But can Jeremy Corbyn’s challenger really lay claim to the legacy of one of Labour’s radicals?

On the very first page of his memoir, In Place of Fear, Bevan asks the critical question for socialists: “Where does power lie in this particular state of Great Britain and how can it be attained by the workers.” As a young miner in a South Wales colliery, “this was no abstract question for us. The circumstances of our lives made it a burning, luminous mark of interrogation.”