THIRTEEN years ago, I saw for the first time the film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It documents, in fly-on-the-wall fashion, not only the 2002 US-backed coup d’etat against the Chavez government, but also its defeat by the massed hands of Venezuelans who came onto the streets to oppose it.

A year later, I was on a plane to Caracas, joining a solidarity delegation of trade unionists and activists to witness first hand the Bolivarian revolution being made in Venezuela. There were two central lessons of that experience.

First, solidarity matters. The revolution in public services, poverty reduction, and education alongside demonstrations for the government — unthinkable in Britain as politicians turned to the slash-and-burn logic of austerity — bore little relation to the headlines at home about anti-democratic and dictatorial strongmen.