A new dawn has broken, has it not? This was the euphoric statement wielded by Tony Blair on the steps of Number 10 Downing Street in May 1997 as he led his party in to 13 years of government, to the cheers of what we now know were bussed in supporters; the spinning had begun. Those on the left of the Party went along for the ride, caught up in a blitz of popular revolt against the Tories, of whom the public had finally had enough. We had reservations and apprehension about our new young leader, but celebrated with the throng. Eighteen years later we have our own moment of elation as we bask in the glow of one of our own becoming Labour leader. The feeling I had on Saturday will only be topped if, in 2020 or before, I am celebrating a Labour victory in a general election with Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister.

The scale of Corbyn’s victory cannot be over-estimated. When the contest began he was anywhere between 100-1 and 500-1 to become Labour leader, depending on your bookie of choice. Some non-parliamentarians like Owen Jones were actually placed at shorter odds; he was seen as the outsider, the joke candidate, the left winger; the implication of course is that being left wing is a thing of the past and his more “moderate” opponents were still the main contenders, throwing a bone to the Party base on the ballot paper. Since then, some three months ago, meeting after meeting and husting on hustings has shown Corbyn to be a relaxed operator who addresses people as equals without patronising them. He answers questions as directly as they are asked without suffering fools gladly. He has appeared honest, open and human, an all too rare commodity in the modern politician and at no point has he resorted to personal attacks on his opponents and their supporters. He has inspired people who voted Labour at the last election, UKIP, Green, SNP, people who didn’t vote at all, young, old, across class boundaries, majority and minority alike with his message of change and hope for a different society.

This most extraordinary victory, against all the odds with every tool of the establishment laid against him, is actually the easy part. If we thought the vitriol from the press was spiteful drivel before, you aint seen nuthin’ yet. Already as I write this piece the Daily Mail have an article on their website claiming that new Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell wanted to kill Margaret Thatcher for the IRA so Labour could increase taxes on the middle class (I shit you not). It’s as though they are now using their own Daily Mail headline generator for actual content – I’m only surprised they didn’t sneak in a sub-heading stating that Jeremy Corbyn can give you cancer. Ed Miliband was vilified in the press; it was disgusting, invasive and shoddy but it ultimately worked, and the press will be banking on it working again. This is where the people come in.

We have to be the ones to change the narrative; we have to challenge, push, cajole and persuade media organisations that we demand a fairer representation of a plural politics and of politicians in our country. The press rely on the public for survival, not the other way around; and while we may never bring Daily Mail editors round to believing in socialism, we should be able to get a foot in the door of any press organ and be represented in their pages, on their frequency or their cameras otherwise it proves what we really know to be the case; that we do not have a free press in this country, it is bought and paid for by the wealthy and the powerful, and it is aimed squarely at convincing the poor that the person down the street who is almost as poor as them is their enemy. They are there to convince people that members of trade unions are the enemy, that public sector workers are the enemy and that public spending rather than banker driven profligacy causes financial crises. The civil service, the police, the military, the political class, business leaders, bankers, think tanks and even the aristocracy will be out in force to convince the public that Jeremy Corbyn, and by association the Labour Party and its supporters, are dangerous subversives that need to be stopped.

We also have to learn from the ways the political right work in this country. If this left-right dichotomy was about statistics we would have won the argument long ago. We point to how many people on benefits live in crippling poverty while someone on the right will find the most unrepresentative example of a lazy, feckless down and out and portray them as the embodiment of a fair social policy. This is key to outmanoeuvring them. We must find those stories that enhance our factual ground work. All the numbers of people dying in the Med didn’t change people’s opinions until that one photograph of a dead child washed up on a beach like a piece of driftwood. An example would be Stephen Taylor, a war veteran of 60 years old who was looking for work; at 60 that is no easy task. In his proud role as an ex-soldier he volunteered selling poppies for the British Legion – the Job Centre used this to accuse him of not actively seeking work to the levels they would expect and they removed his £71.20 a week Jobseeker’s Allowance. You can give a voter the number of how many people have been sanctioned and they barely respond; you tell them this story of a soldier of 16 years in the 1st Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and it riles people, and justly so.

I have written before about the homogenisation of politics in this country and the situation we find ourselves now is a direct threat to that equivalence of ideology between the main parties. As the franchise was extended to the working classes, both men and women, the traditional elites have been terrified that they would finally be found out and removed from power. The last real moment of change was in 1945 when the nation overwhelmingly rejected the war-time leader and hero for a chance at a welfare state, free healthcare and full employment. The gains we made then have been slowly but surely clawed back by the elite; financial redistribution has moved the other way, back to the wealthy and the way they have managed this is to remove the desire to vote for anyone. Give the working class the vote yes, but give them no one to represent their plight while at the same time disseminating power away from parliament and in to board rooms, corporations and unelected bodies entrenching the power dynamic which has led us to this crucial moment. At the same time they label any dissent as mad, crazy, pinko, communist nonsense – Corbyn has been labelled an extremist by Tories and Labour grandees alike; yet there is nothing extremist about wanting a decent wage for working people, for wanting an NHS free for all when needed, for wanting reasonable out of work benefits, an education that doesn’t leave students debt ridden, a chance to campaign for better terms and conditions in the workplace. The real extremes come from the radicalised Neo-liberal wing of politics who have co-opted the word “moderate”, it is extreme to want to develop new nuclear weapons which could destroy the world 7 times over, it is extreme to want to remove all possible support from disabled people, to remove any meaningful tax burden on corporations, it is extreme to support the absolute and growing inequality in our society and entrenching low paid, insecure work for the vast majority of the population, it is extreme to consign destitute people to a life of misery and reliant on food banks in a 21st century developed country with a supposed growing economy, it is extreme to bring in socialist policies for banks while hospital admissions for malnutrition are rising. The extremists are the new moderates and vice versa through a nominative sleight of hand.

There are some, many even, within the Parliamentary Party who would like to see him fail. Some have already stepped down from Shadow Cabinet positions they were never offered while rumours abound that characters such as Simon Danczuk and Rachel Reeves may defect to UKIP. If these people who disagreed with Corbyn had the courage of their convictions they would resign as MPs and take their ideas to the electorate; stand as independents and let the public decide who should represent them in parliament. Most would not get a look-in in their constituencies without the talismanic backing of the Labour logo. There is a real disconnect between the party membership and the PLP; it was ever thus but not to the degree it is now. Despite the Party bigwigs throwing all they could behind the other three candidates the mandate Corbyn has been given is bigger than that of any Labour leader since such records were kept. Not only that, Saturday, after the announcement was made was also the most successful day in political history for people joining up to a Party – some 15,000 people joined as Labour came home, as some people have put it. Those in the party who disagree in certain areas with Corbyn should be amazed and happy that their party is now attracting members in vast numbers once again; this should tell them there is something in this. Most MPs are weathervanes and will blow whichever way public opinion does. Labour Party Members are the public, a public that our leaders must now follow!

My reaction on hearing there were 2000 people in Leeds on a rainy Saturday night that had turned out to see Jeremy Corbyn was firstly amazement – my home town is not known for its political engagement with the left. But also a feeling that “this unelectable bloke is terribly popular isn’t he?”. What we have to do, and by we I mean the Labour movement as a whole, is come together. As ever with the left our main threat doesn’t come from our enemies in traditional power bases, it comes from within; either from the so called moderate wing of the Labour Party or from those who are so far to the left they can’t see when a necessary compromise has to be made. Jeremy has already said he wants Labour to be broad in its appeal and inclusive in direction, he wants input from all sections of the party and to throw open the policy making doors to every corner of the membership; a true democratic move. This means that there will be areas of policy formulation that don’t suit the traditional left; what we must not do is rant and rave when concessions are made. Obviously there are legitimate red lines within that such as welfare spending or the NHS; we must judge each policy suggestion on merit and contribute to the debate – if we come out having lost the argument then it will be because of a legitimate process rather than an arbitrary decision, and that must be respected. The right have always been able to coalesce around the idea that ultimately the worker and democracy itself is the enemy and whatever else happens they remain focused on removing power from the majority. We must remain clear about who our enemies are, and that our key battle is to remove them from power before we can make any worthwhile changes, otherwise we might as well start pissing in to the wind now.

The first thing Jeremy Corbyn did as leader, straight after the publicity was out of the way was to attend a rally supporting better treatment for refugees and asylum seekers in this country. This is what I want and expect the Labour leader to do. Today he will begin fighting against the pernicious Trade Union Bill which I have written about before – again, something Labour should push against as strong as it possibly can; the clue is in the name: Labour. Opportunities such as this do not come along often. It is a truly revolutionary moment and it must be grasped otherwise the right-wing of the Labour Party will give a big “I Told You So” and this generation’s opportunity for a new politics will have been thwarted. We cannot let that happen. Fairness and justice are at stake and our future, our democracy is too precious to lose now.