SHOCK

Well, we are two weeks into the new dispensation and against all the odds (to some) Jeremy Corbyn won. As I write, Labour's 2015 conference is in full swing and John McDonnell has just made his first speech as Shadow Chancellor. YEAH -- I know! John McDonnell!!!!

As I said before, my facebook page temporarily turned into a shrine to Jeremy Corbyn so I forgot to post here.

It was a brutal enough campaign in some ways - the old party machine couldn't bring themselves to see what was in front of their eyes. People who had walked away from political engagement began to find their voices and the overwhelming message was JezWeCan.

So the old guard set about trying to 'educate' the masses. The wanted to tell us how wrong we were to abandon the centre ground. It almost seemed as if they were telling us not to worry our pretty little heads about all this politics stuff. If we would just leave it to them, they would lead us in the right direction (literally, some might say)

Against the surround sound wall of Old New Labour voices, who seemed to have access to every mainstream media outlet, the seemingly solitary voice of Jeremy Corbyn was politely explaining why they were wrong. He explained that Labour would win again by leading a movement of people. He explained that austerity was a political choice rather than an inevitability. He brought people in their thousands into halls and rooms to talk about how we could build a better world based on social justice, equality and peace. I realised early on that something was really different when i saw a video of the event in Liverpool. It wasn't so much what he said - these were issues that have been talked about on social media for as long as I've been using it. He essentially made the moral case for building a nation based on looking after each other. It was the response from the people in the room. They were bursting towards change in a way that i have never seen. People were aching for something new. Ironically, the 'new' they were shouting out for were the very principles that labour was founded on. You could feel, even through a youtube video, that he was saying the things that people have been saying to each other for years. But noone was listening until Jeremy Corbyn scraped onto the ballot paper.

It's hard to believe that social justice, equality and peace are talked about as radical and revolutionary ideas. It's a sign maybe of how cynical we have become politically that these things are seen as a threat rather than values that should underpin everything we do. Anyway, they were cast as threats and the full resources of the free marketeers were deployed to discredit the message and the messenger. Mostly the messenger.

Corbyn himself reiterated the message that this was about policy and not personality. There would be no abuse and debate would be conducted in a civil respectful manner.

Slowly but surely, the momentum began to build and the tide began to turn. It seemed as if whatever they threw at him, Jeremy Corbyn was able to rely on a growing band of ordinary people to refute the lies and challenge the myths.

Obviously some of the loudest social media warriors were unable to contain themselves and the discussions turned very nasty in some places. Not all of the offenders were the Corbynistas though. Some of the party's 'leading lights' made public statements about Corbyn supporters needing heart transplants, about the nominators being 'morons', about 'marching back to the 1980s', about Corbynistas being infiltrators. It was pretty relentless and, if I'm honest, very depressing at times.

The media of course couldn't resist the call of the establishment. With a few notable exceptions, they dug up everything controversial that Corbyn ever said or did and then reported it, mostly out of context, in a bid to paint him as some kind of one man terrorist threat to the world. They resorted to ridicule, lies, distortions, myths and plain abuse, supported by many within the party. They kept it up day in and day out. And still the band of Corbynistas kept growing.

The campaign was underpinned by an unbelievable social media intervention, led by Red Labour. RL mobilised people who had never been involved in politics before, returners whose faith had been restored, supporters of other parties who suddenly recognised the value of Labour. It was slick and yet was run from houses dotted across the country, by people who largely never set eyes on each other. They rebutted every lie, organised people into phone banks, set up petitions. Most of all,they capitalised on the yearning for change. 

On the day the leadership results were announced, our house was on tenterhooks. The tv was turned to BBC News, we had Twitter on one machine and facebook on  another (you can't be too tuned in to the world). You could feel (and read about) the tension. A rumour circulated that it had been won in the first round but as they began to announce the results, my stomach was churning. 

When the scale of the victory became known, I could almost hear the shouts and cheers. Thousands of ordinary people defied the odds and the struggle for power began.