Corbyn’s loss was resounding, his party led to a historic defeat. He handed the Conservatives their largest majority in decades and Labour its worst defeat since 1983.

The inevitable result of this, when combined with the years of comparisons between Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, is a glut of takes about what this election means for Democrats across the pond.

However, making inferences from this election and applying them to Democrats is a fool’s errand. While it’s true that both parties have seen an erosion in support with working-class, rural voters, the same can be said of center-left and social democratic parties across the West.

Labour is just one prime example of this, so if the Democrats should take any lessons from this debacle, they should consider broader trends and put this election in context, rather than relying on one night of electoral results.

However, for those further to the left than mainstream Democrats, Corbyn’s loss should be an important wakeup call. Corbyn’s rise in tandem with Bernie Sanders’ growth in popularity in the US, led American leftists to quickly latch onto Corbyn as a model to be emulated, in spite of the obvious problems the former Labour leader had.

Despite frequent comparisons, Corbyn is to the left of Sanders on almost every issue and was vastly unpopular in a way Sanders is not. While his proposal for sweeping nationalization of industries might have appealed to some sector of the American left, his apologies for terrorist groups, and blind eye to antisemitism in his party should have been a red flag.

Ignoring these obvious electoral and ideological problems, groups like the Democratic Socialists of America were quick to make Corbyn an example of the direction Democrats needed to move in, especially after his closer-than-expected loss in 2017, when the was set so low that a narrow loss rather than the expected total defeat was spun as a victory for Corbyn’s brand of politics.

Following this “success,” American leftists made Corbyn an emblem of the type of politics Democrats should adopt. In the weeks leading up to this election, Leftists on Twitter increasingly shared Labour Party material, bemoaning that Democrats “would never” produce similar messaging. The hyper-online left made Corbyn a template of what Democrats should adopt, post-haste.

Of course, immediately following Corbyn’s car wreck of an election result, accountability for those who pushed this narrative evaporated. Those who embraced Corbyn were quick to place blame on Brexit, the media, centrists, and all the other usual suspects.

Blame for the man who actually led the party was nowhere to be found.

This incident highlights the serious issues the Online Left has with cult-of-personality politics. In the US, any Democratic candidate other than Sanders is a corporate shill out to kill your family, and on these grounds, many on the extreme left profess loyalty to Sanders exclusively. Ignore the fact that any of his policies are unlikely to pass into law, even with a Democratic majority in the Senate.

This sector of the left has fallen into the trap of having One Special Guy; a politician so intertwined with their political identity that any semblance of reason goes straight out the window.

Corbyn’s defeat should not have been a surprise. He was down by around ten points in the polls and consistently trailed Johnson over the course of the campaign. He was tremendously unpopular. Despite this, Corbyn held onto leadership as his party barreled towards electoral oblivion, just as Sanders held on during the 2016 primaries, fueled by resentment and a base that seemed only willing to support him.

The left does itself no favors with this delusion. The result of the Corbyn debacle is handing power to the right and failing to deliver a progressive government for the UK. While all the signs warned of a cliff ahead, Labour floored it.

There is certainly a warning about the electoral consequences of lurching too far to the left, but the larger lesson for the left is that populist tendency to build politics around a single person risks another electoral car-crash—and ultimately giving power to one’s political opponents.