Forget what you think you know about Jeremy Corbyn. Forget the blind eye turned to anti-semitism in his party, forget his failure to sing the national anthem at a war memorial service, scrub your recollection of his silence over Russian actions in Syria, and you can even overlook that time he pretended he couldn’t get a seat on a train. 2016 should have taught you that mistakes don’t necessarily matter. The electorate can suffer from a short memory, and in time the attention-span of the media helps to cleanse the reputations of all but the very worst. Junk those settled assumptions about how the world works, the ones that saw Ed Miliband, the EU referendum Remain campaign and Hillary Clinton winning power. When you consider how unpredictable world events are likely to become, the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister is no longer fanciful. It might be unlikely, but Labour would be wrong to consider Corbyn’s shot at number ten to be impossible.

Read more: Why do young people hate Jeremy Corbyn?

Jeremy Corbyn should focus on his strengths

Team Corbyn should start by focussing on their candidate’s key strengths: he’s seen as a principled, anti-war leader whose core values don’t bend to fit fashions or uncomfortable facts. Voters don’t like professional politicians, and Corbyn won power within his party by being distinct from the tidier, cleaner, more ideologically compromised candidates who stood against him.

Forget the centre ground

Traditional thinking says that Corbyn needs to occupy the centre ground, but really all Corbyn needs to do is win the most seats: if he can depress overall voter turnout while exciting his base, he can make the most of the fact that the Conservatives will effectively be trying to win their third consecutive general election in 2020. Jeremy Corbyn is an outsider who can present a fresh and entirely different approach from the established political class. He can’t win by trying to beat Theresa May at her own game, but there’s an outside chance that he doesn’t need to.

Be clever with the media

For Labour to win, Corbyn will have to address and overcome his perceived weaknesses. Labour’s top team already know that Jeremy needs to engage with media more enthusiastically, and make himself more publicly available. Corbyn also needs to work on his grasp of briefings and his message discipline. His attempt at a re-launch was derailed by his fumbled answer to a question about whether he’d like to see a maximum cap on wages (just above Jeremy Corbyn's salary of £140,000), and it took Labour almost the entire day to clarify his answer. Corbyn needs to talk more, and say a little less.

Focus on the NHS and tax

The Conservatives like to employ the Australian political strategist Sir Lynton Crosby who advises them to scrub the ‘barnacles’ off the ship; Corbyn needs to cut back his offering to the British people into clear, identifiable, digestible bites. The NHS is an obvious strong point for the Labour party, with a narrative being pushed that the Conservative Party – in the words of critics - aren’t doing enough to help it. Corbyn’s message to the public should be focussed on fixing the NHS, giving the most vulnerable a fair deal, and creating a simpler, easier tax system that takes weight off the shoulders of people struggling to bring up families while making big business and the most successful pay. Fixing health, a great society that leaves nobody behind, and a fair tax system should be the ballpark in which his slogans are batting.

Be patriotic

Fundamentally, Corbyn needs to ditch his Islington comfort zone and sense the resurgent nationalism that was the hallmark of the successful Brexit and Trump campaigns. Corbyn should be expressively patriotic, and teach his shadow cabinet to abandon (or hide) their disdain for patriotism. Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry’s squeamishness about a white van and an English flag in Rochester needs to be replaced with a flag-draped, performative exercise in proud nationalism. Corbyn eating fish and chips, Corbyn attending the last night of the proms, Corbyn standing at the bar in a few pubs, and looking at ease with the country he wants to lead.

Fight dirty

It won’t be enough for Labour just to mobilise young voters, and to build the most technically proficient political platform the country has ever seen to target their message, Labour will need to fight dirty. Corbyn can’t win over moderate Britain, but perhaps he can make them stay home. To do that, Labour need to take advantage of what people dislike about politicians, and attack the government on their record. The saga over the inquiry into child sex abuse, and every other hiccup between now and voting day needs to be ruthlessly and relentlessly pursued. If Corbyn can fight nastily while harnessing the popular mood, there will be opportunities for him to profit. Theresa May will inevitably have to get closer to Donald Trump for the sake of the special relationship. Corbyn can attack the government for this. As May secures trade deals, Corbyn can be anti-globalisation. As May concedes and compromises on Brexit with her European counterparts, Corbyn can exploit the shortcomings of the agreement. If he wants to follow the Trump strategy to win, Corbyn needs to drag the national debate into the sewer, and then mobilise his core voters to get out to polling stations.

Be lucky

Trump won by stirring a populist frustration among the working class. If Corbyn can tap into that, offering them jobs, dignity, and a vision of the future that feels more like the past, then he has a shot. It would require a complete transformation, but if Donald Trump can go from laughing stock to leader of the free world, then Corbyn’s transformation might just be possible, too. Most of all, Corbyn needs to be lucky. Maybe someone in the Kremlin might take a shining to the idea of a Corbyn victory. Stranger things have happened.