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As Jeremy Corbyn took to the stage at Labour Party conference last month to make the leader’s closing speech he was like a rock god soaking up the exhilarating hysteria.

He was smiling, chucking out well-timed gags about Theresa May, ever-so-humbly accepting the cries of ‘We love you Jeremy’ and outbreaks of ‘Oh Jer-e-my Corrrrr-byn’. The crowd’s elation, this devotion, this emotional unloading was underscored by his shifts of gear in 90 minutes of oration — one moment he was mocking the Tories (to sonorous panto boos), the next addressing the grave issues of housing shortages and the fire at Grenfell.

Here was the slickest and most confident Jeremy Corbyn anyone had seen — a winner, without actually having won. He stood sharp in his dark suit, ironed shirt and red tie, proud in the face of multiple standing ovations. This Jeremy Corbyn was no longer the joke in the oversized beige jacket; no longer the Leninist in his Vlad cap, boot on spade, turning the soil of his Finchley allotment; no longer even ‘Corbyn’, but ‘Jeremy’, bold, brave and authentic, a politician who could speak to real people about real issues. Even his detractors concluded it wasn’t a bad speech.

So how did this transformation of Jeremy Corbyn from much-mocked and shambolic no-hoper to possible Prime Minister-in-waiting, take place?

Rewind to 2015 and the perception of Labour was a party in utter chaos. Among most Labour MPs, Corbyn’s election to leader was greeted with the sort of deflated shock that football fans experience watching their team fall out of the Premier League.

Immediately the stories seeped out. Behind closed doors, it was reported, there was infighting and ineptitude. MPs claimed they were unable to secure meetings — or even responses to their calls and emails. There were accusations of paranoia and intolerance to any dissent, perceived or real. This attitude spilled over to journalists. Corbyn was chippy to camera, he seemed to find reporters’ questions impertinent.

The media had a field day. First with the clothes: the grey Wilson shell-suit (RRP £69.99), the blue-collar shirts and those terrible, terrible shorts (right). In the Commons, David Cameron scolded during Prime Minister’s question time, ‘Put on a proper suit, do up your tie.’

They attacked his rambling speeches, his idolisation of despots like Fidel Castro, his rent-a-mob rallies; and of course his manic jam-making. All this was set against the reminder that he himself had a middle-class background and a private education.

Under Corbyn’s leadership Labour had fractured. So bad was the acrimony between the leadership office in the House of Commons and the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in Labour’s Southside headquarters in Victoria Street that 44 MPs resigned their positions and a vote of no confidence was tabled (dubbed the ‘chicken coup’). ‘The fact that the people in the leader’s office used to refer to Southside as “the Darkside” gives you an idea of the hostility,’ says a senior member of Corbyn’s team.

Angela Eagle trembled to her feet to stand against him, and sat down again. Owen Smith took up the challenge but suffered a humiliating defeat when Corbyn was re-elected. Moderates despaired.

In addition those in Corbyn’s office say they felt ‘handicapped’ by the Labour Party’s control of announcements. ‘People in the press office reacted negatively to everything we did,’ says a source. ‘They’d say, “We can’t make this policy announcement; the wording is wrong.” And you’d get bottlenecks.’

The net result was that Seumas Milne — Corbyn’s director of communications and strategy — could not get ‘cut through’ on serious issues or policy. ‘One problem was that journalists weren’t writing about the subject matter; they were writing about the noise around the subject matter,’ says the source.

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In December 2016, arguably Corbyn’s lowest point, the party had dropped 17 points behind the Conservatives and a leaked copy of Corbyn’s diary was found ‘almost empty’ of appointments. His reputation as Westminster’s class clown was so entrenched he barely appeared in the papers. Tristram Hunt stepped down, as did Jamie Reed.

The perception was not just that he was unelectable, but unbearable. Accusations of anti-Semitism and sexism dogged his milieu. Ken Livingstone’s comments on Hitler supporting Zionism were followed by Jackie Walker, vice-chair of Momentum, the activist movement that threw its weight behind Corbyn, being suspended from the party after criticising Holocaust Memorial Day for only commemorating Jewish victims.

So what changed? How did Corbyn go from these depths to the glittering heights of September’s conference? How did he turn from man of no confidence into man of no limits? Those closest to Corbyn — and some journalists who have grown to know him in the past two years — say the man himself is little changed in any fundamental way. What has changed is the landscape in which he was able to operate.

‘Corbyn’s greatest strength is his ability to campaign,’ says a senior Labour source. ‘He loves campaigning. Jeremy is very much about real people and real experiences.’ By calling a snap election, May handed him a gift. Even his office admits that at times his readiness to speak to everyone he met on the road was ‘a pain’.

Meanwhile, Milne had devised a new press strategy using specialist journalists; so an NHS announcement, say, would go to a medical correspondent. Once the election was called, new opportunities opened up: Ofcom rules ensured balanced television coverage for the main parties. ‘This was something Seumas was keen to prioritise,’ says the team source.

‘Very quickly we realised we had been underestimated and we had five big factors going for us: our policy was well developed, we now had broadcast balance, Jeremy’s campaigning abilities were one of his strengths — he did 48 of the key seats — and we had hundreds of thousands of “boots on the ground” to campaign. We also had an organic social media presence, which we’d already developed.’

Suddenly Corbyn was on television all the time, and this exposure off-set the derision of the national press. ‘People thought, “He’s not that bad. Actually he’s quite good.”’

‘His appeal is his alleged authenticity and stubborn refusal over 40 years to change his views,’ says a journalist who knows him well, pointing out that when Paxman interviewed him and he seemed to be going against his own party, people thought that was good because he was true to himself.

The lack of ‘cut through’ in the early part of the year meant little was known about how advanced Labour’s policy was, and so the manifesto, when it did launch, costed and thick with detail, was in contrast with the Conservative’s effort (which one of their own MPs called ‘a s*** in a folder’). ‘For the people on the inside [the manifesto] didn’t come out of the blue. It was very well advanced,’ says an insider.The broader Corbyn’s appeal, the more he relaxed he was. ‘It didn’t matter what situation you put Theresa May in, she looked uncomfortable. Jeremy didn’t. He could be talking about the Queen and have a joke about it. Or be in a fur coat next to a Maserati and he carries it off.’

Now his detractors looked like the bullies. As Corbyn said in his own speech, a 14-page diatribe against him in the Daily Mail saw his popularity rating jump 10 per cent.His wardrobe changed too, something his team describe as both ‘deliberate’ and ‘organic’. ‘From a media point of view, darker suits tend to look better on camera and a bit of that fed into it,’ explains an adviser. And the shell-suit and shorts? ‘None of these items were banished from his wardrobe.’

On grander scale, Labour’s infrastructure was being overhauled. Officials had been hard at work on strategy, partly in preparation for a possible snap election. A concerted effort was underway to beef up Corbyn’s team. Key figures already included Karie Murphy, his office manager, Sian Jones, responsible for ‘the grid’, Katy Clark, his political secretary, Laura Parker, his private secretary, Andrew Murray, his adviser, and Andrew Fisher, his policy lead and author of the manifesto. James Schneider came on board from Momentum to help with comms and Milne — on secondment from The Guardian — announced in January he was staying permanently.

In February the team hired a secret weapon in the form of communications specialist and ex-BBC journalist Steve Howell, who tackled party organisation with a professionalism borrowed from business, (insiders say he ‘categorised’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats). In March two academic consultants came aboard to help with ‘language’ so Corbyn’s message could ‘reach more people’.

Over in Southside, two documents had long been prepared: the first, called ‘Snap General Election Guide’, the second a chart detailing a campaign hour-by-hour, day-by-day, week-by-week. Nick Brown, the chief whip, took senior staff through potential election dates: around 4 May to chime with local and mayoral elections; late June; early October. (Actually 8 June had been rejected on the grounds that ‘nobody expected May to call a general election in the middle of local elections’).

Another floor of the Southside building had been secured and staff numbers jumped from 450 to nearly 600 when Parliament was dissolved, moving into the Leader’s Office with a smooth operation.

Meanwhile a digital team built programmes for promoting the party among the young and for mobilising activists. One tool married up Facebook with the electoral register so that Labour could place adverts directly on people’s pages. There were memes and apps, such as Find My Polling Station, and Labour gathered 7.5m views on Snapchat. ‘Our digital campaign appealed to a generation who may never have voted otherwise,’ says the source. ‘And it made it easy.’

One team member says, ‘Basically we were on permanent campaign footing; we were already campaigning for the local elections. From an operational point of view we could move quickly and easily.’ The campaign was off to a ‘flying start’. ‘We were making progress [in the polls] from the first week,’ says an aide. None of this was being taken into account in May’s No10, who thought they were fighting the old Corbyn. In fact their greatest fear when they called the election was that Labour would find a way of replacing him.

While May’s terrible campaign is often cited as the reason for Corbyn’s gains (an interpretation that makes Labour strategists ‘cross’) the flip side is rarely expressed: one of the biggest flaws in the Tory campaign was that they underestimated Corbyn’s ability to turn himself into a professional politician.Although Labour was getting its act together invisibly, no one knew whether this would translate into votes. The loss of Copeland, a Labour seat since the 1930s, in the February by-election, suggested it wouldn’t. ‘After that, some people thought there was no way of the party doing well and that after the election there would be another attempt to get rid of Jeremy. But we began to do better and better in the polls, and as the money kept flooding in to support the campaigning, people [in the office] began to get a sense of confidence.’

There were bold campaigning moves. For instance, they suggested making his planned speech on 29 April — his first after May had called the election — about leadership. The advice was, ‘Don’t take on Theresa May on leadership, you’ll lose.’

But Corbyn’s team disagreed. ‘Our positive take was, yes, he may not be that kind of leader — like May — but he is this kind of leader: the kind of leader you can trust, who sticks to his guns… he has integrity.’Certainly the campaign knew Corbyn needed his ‘Philadelphia moment’ (a reference to Obama’s speech in Philadelphia about racism in April 2008) and an email went round to that effect. Following the Manchester Arena bomb, Corbyn made an even riskier comment attacking police cuts implemented by May during her time in the Home Office.

‘You couldn’t resume campaigning without Jeremy addressing what had happened in Manchester. And if he is going to address it, does he talk frankly about why these situations arise — about foreign wars and so on — and what’s to be done? It was decided he should say what he really thought.’

They were warned to expect ‘heavy duty stick’. ‘But we’d taken the decision that we’d deal with issues head-on.’ Arguably this was his Philadelphia coup.

Back at Labour HQ the snap election had another unintended consequence. Once together in Southside, a shared goal of winning helped ease tensions between Corbyn’s team and the Labour Party team. ‘It happened virtually overnight,’ says one official. ‘Because you work in such an intense way during a general election. We bonded and supported each other.’

On 26 May, Corbyn’s 68th birthday, that bonding was in evidence. ‘Jeremy was away campaigning and a number of the Southside team suggested we make a birthday video message to send him.’ There is one other outside factor that helped boost support for Jeremy, and that is that the electorate had shifted leftward. Corbyn’s team say that in recognition of that, the lobby is more respectful towards them. The June intake of MPs are generally supportive of Corbyn — not least because they rode in on the crest of his success. ‘There are a lot more people who want to be part of Jeremy’s Labour,’ says a Southside veteran. The bigger question is whether all these changes can take Corbyn all the way to Downing Street. As one party official points out, ‘That part of the story is still to be tested. We had a s*** opposition against us last time and we still fell short.’