March 14 marks the fourth anniversary of Tony Benn’s death. A long-time Member of Parliament, Tony Benn was for many years the most prominent politician of the Labour left, whose opposition to neoliberalism, globalization, and militarism brought him international recognition. A mentor to current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, his career was defined by his opposition to the party’s slide to the right in the latter decades of the twentieth century.

Like Corbyn, Benn was regularly pilloried in the media as an extremist whose policies were unrealistic. The fact that Benn kept a detailed diary throughout his political career was an excuse for the writer of his obituary in the Guardian, Brian Brivati, to compare him with Samuel Pepys — “someone who described an age without ever having shaped it.” While he would be remembered as a great parliamentarian, Brivati surmised, “He will be forgotten as a practical politician and a political thinker.”

But, contrary to the Guardian’s assertions, the years since Benn’s passing have made clear just how relevant his ideas were for anyone aiming to implement left-wing policies today. In many ways Benn’s vision of socialism has outlived Tony Blair’s New Labour politics — and precisely because it was more practical and less utopian. Focused on popular rather than parliamentary sovereignty, Benn championed new models of nationalization that would set up non-bureaucratic enterprises accountable both to consumers and workers; proposed the taxation of financial interests in order to fund social services; and became the spokesperson for the movement for greater democracy within the Labour Party.