As rush-hour commuters hurried past to find shelter, dozens of people braved the pouring rain to queue outside the TSSA union building, next door to Euston station in London.

Over the course of the evening, there would be hundreds of them. “Labour members queue to the right – and who has RSVP-ed on Facebook?” a woman shouted down the street.

Where they differed in background – BAME and white, twentysomethings to pensioners – they were agreed on one goal: to get Jeremy Corbyn elected as prime minister of the UK.

And to do it, they were turning to the supporters of a similarly unusual political figure from America.

Momentum, the leftwing pressure group, uses these offices as its headquarters, and this was the third in a series of training events it has held to coach Labour members on how to canvass voters.

The sessions are held with the help of organisers from the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US, who are providing assistance in the form of lessons and the introduction of new digital tools.

The right can throw money at elections​ – we throw people Erika Uyterhoeven

Even Corbyn’s most passionate advocates acknowledge that Labour is facing a steep climb to get to Downing Street.

But, they say, drafting in members of the Sanders team – who know something about rallying support for an outsider candidate deemed too radical for the mainstream – has been a vital part of putting the impressive volunteer army to best use.

Sanders might not have won, but his campaign revolutionised the US and sent shockwaves through its political establishment.

While Hillary Clinton had the support of state Democratic committees, Sanders broke the record for small donations for a single candidate, and won in several key states including Indiana, New Hampshire and Michigan – deemed one of the greatest upsets in US presidential primaries. This was largely down to the methods deployed by his volunteers.

Erika Uyterhoeven, a 30-year-old from Boston, is one of those organisers. She says that the vital next step for the British effort will be deploying the activists in the right places.

She is helping Momentum mobilise what would otherwise be an overwhelming number of people, and together they have implemented technology never before used in a UK general election campaign.

Bernie Sanders greets supporters in Michigan in November 2016. He won the state’s Democratic primary in a dramatic upset. Photograph: Mark Bugnaski/AP

This includes:

My Nearest Marginal, a website which allows members to locate their nearest marginal and organise a carpool with others to travel there.

Peer-to-peer texting to drum up support.

And a phone-banking app that allows you to call Labour members from the comfort of your home.



“I got involved in politics through the Sanders campaign. I was the national out-of-state organising director, in charge of mobilising people to go from border states to higher-priority states,” Uyterhoeven told the Guardian.

“It was a huge success, in terms of our get-out-the-vote effort: about 35-40% of the volunteers came from outside the state to help out. So it was very similar work to having these marginal constituencies in the UK.

“If you live in a safe constituency voting 80% one way or the other, you can go knock on doors where the vote is much closer.”

She had a straightforward summary of the Sanders approach: “The right can throw money at elections – we throw people.”

In Euston, the focus was on arming the volunteers with the most effective arguments to use once they get there.

US campaign organiser Jeremy Parkin, 27, dressed down in a Sanders T-shirt and jeans, told the packed room: “We want to arm you to be able to address issues people raise, such as ‘Theresa May is a strong leader’, ‘I’m voting Lib Dem because of Brexit’ or ‘What about infighting in the Labour party?’”

The crowd had to be split in half and spread over two floors. Over a couple of hours, Parkin ran everyone through the “response cycle” that should be applied to all non-Labour voters on the doorstep.

“You can’t talk about the entire manifesto, it’s completely overwhelming. So focus the conversation on one issue and use your most effective points on that,” he said.

“Start by acknowledging someone’s concerns, and remember that all concerns are valid. Say: ‘I’ve been there too’ or: ‘I see where you’re coming from.’”

He advised campaigners to isolate the issue and apply a Labour policy to it.

“If someone says: ‘I can’t wait to kick those people out,’ it’s hard to respond in a factual way. In the US someone said to me: ‘Don’t take away my guns, you Commie scumbag.’

“So try to bring it back to an issue again. Say: ‘OK, so immigration is your biggest concern? Well, this is what Jeremy wants to do.’”

Jeremy Corbyn at a Momentum rally in Manchester on 5 May 2017. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

Parkin encouraged campaigners to mention their own personal story about what drew them to Labour. “Everyone’s got a personal story. We’ve all got ways of how these policies affect us … if you change two people’s minds, you’ve tripled your voting power. You can’t change everybody’s mind either, but you can plant a seed.”

Almost 190,000 people signed up as Labour members before and immediately after Corbyn’s first leadership bid, and the party membership currently stands at approximately 528,000.

Momentum alone has nearly 24,000 members and 200,000 supporters. Were all of them to get out and canvass voters, Labour could win the election, the group maintains.

Uyterhoeven agrees. Corbyn’s campaign, like Sanders’s, is a people-powered one, she said, and there is a lot more interest than the traditional system can handle.

“Every training we’ve held, over 100 people have showed up. When we launched the carpool website [trialled in the Stoke byelection], we had 20,000 unique visitors within 18 hours. Imagine trying to talk to all these people without the tools in place.”

There’s a slogan – ‘You can’t buy Bernie.’ He’s never been swayed by money or political influence. Corbyn is the same Erika Uyterhoeven

Peer-to-peer texting, for example, was crucial in building the Sanders movement, and while email blasts from Momentum are opened by about 20–40% of those who receive them, peer-to-peer texting has nearly a 100% open rate and a reply rate of approximately 40%.

According to Rachel Godfrey Wood, Momentum campaign coordinator, Labour has been empowered by the release of its manifesto, which, she argues, activists can use to overturn any negative perceptions of Corbyn.

“It’s allowed the party to cut through all the other distractions people have been hearing for the past 18 months, about infighting, about Jeremy, about the members.”



But above all, says Momentum national organiser Adam Klug, 30, getting new members out on the doorstep could be decisive.

“The Tories have a small party membership and don’t have the levels of enthused, engaged and inspired people who are embedded in the hearts of their community and understand issues which affect constituents on a daily basis,” he said.

“It’s about shifting the culture and perception of politics away from something which is done to you by people in suits in Westminster.”

The purpose of Momentum when it first launched was to build on the energy and enthusiasm that surrounded Corbyn’s first leadership bid, Klug added, and the project of transforming political culture was just beginning.



“It is quite demoralising to be trying to build something positive, to enable and inspire people, and to have it so often be twisted or spun in a way that is somehow sinister, or aggressive,” he said.

“That’s the nature of the terrain when you’re engaging in political activity, but all around the country I’ve seen decent, caring people who want a better, fairer society.

“The characterisation of us is based on a very small minority that exists within Momentum, like it exists within all organisations or groups. But it’s a total misrepresentation of what this is about.”

Uyterhoeven, who studied economics at university before working at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US and later at an economic consultancy firm, is planning to attend Harvard next year. “One thing for Bernie, and I think this applies for Corbyn too, is there is a certain integrity behind it,” she said.

“There’s a slogan – ‘You can’t buy Bernie.’ He’s never been swayed by money or political influence.

“Corbyn is the same, he’s not doing this for glory or his ego or money, he’s there for the people. That’s a new thing in politics, and I think that’s what has got so many people involved.”