JEREMY CORBYN is the leader of the Labour Party, winning in the first round with almost 60 per cent of the votes cast.

In his first speech as party leader, Corbyn explained that his campaign had been conducted “in the spirit of hope and optimism,” built from the grassroots and gathering momentum as the summer progressed.

And what a summer it has been. The morning of Friday May 8 2015, the day after the general election, feels as if it were a lifetime ago.

Owen Jones had sent a tweet which read: “Don’t mourn, organise!”, yet all I wanted to do was crawl under the duvet for five years and emerge in 2020, hopefully to be greeted by a Labour prime minister smiling on the steps of No 10. If you’d asked me then, in the wake of Ed Miliband’s emotional departure, who I thought would be his likely successor, I would have said Andy Burnham without missing a beat.

Burnham was widely tipped as the next Labour leader, and he appeared at that time to be the candidate who would be backed by the unions. Yet that was four months ago, and you all know the phrase about a week being a long time in politics.

On the evening of June 3 2015, the internet was ablaze with the exciting news — Jeremy Corbyn would be running for Labour leader.

I could hardly believe my eyes. Something seismic was on the horizon.

On Friday June 5, the Morning Star ran the story under the headline “Corbyn can save Labour,” and the first seeds of his remarkable campaign success were sown as Jeremy had already secured more nominations than fellow hopeful Mary Creagh, who had been campaigning for weeks.

By that first week in June, I’d almost come to terms with my anguish and despair at the prospect of five long, dark years under a government hell-bent on destroying the NHS, dismantling the welfare state, and smashing the unions.

There were rumblings of a march upon the Tory Party conference in October, and the thought of actually getting out and demonstrating seemed much more attractive than my earlier plans of taking a five-year long extended hibernation with my cats and a vast pile of books.

Corbyn’s decision to run for the leadership lifted hundreds of us out of our politically induced malaise, validating Owen Jones’s use of the phrase “don’t mourn, organise!” — although in my case it would have been more accurate had it read “mourn for a couple of weeks, then be inspired by Jeremy Corbyn and organise.”

For me, June 15 was the day things changed. I was in Glasgow for the Unison conference, where meeting like-minded folk seemed like the beginning of the healing process, banishing my political despair.

I was on the conference floor when a delegate from Barnet announced that Jeremy had made it onto the ballot paper, to cheers, claps and delegates leaping to their feet.

I was lifted out of a sense of despair and emptiness, as Corbyn’s campaign became a focal point, a rallying cry of sorts.

At that point, I didn’t dare contemplate a Corbyn victory, yet the very fact that Jeremy was on the ballot paper was heartening — finally a politician who speaks for the likes of me would be given a platform to voice socialist policy ideas to a wider arena, finally I had something to believe in, someone from a mainstream political party to look to for leadership and inspiration.

On July 5, Unite came out as backing Corbyn. After that I allowed myself to imagine what it might be like if he won — and then he started winning.

Constituency Labour Party after Constituency Labour Party came out in favour of Corbyn, 152 of them in all.

Jeremy won that contest hands down, and the change in the air became tangible.

On July 15, the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush revealed the results of a private poll which showed Corbyn was on track to sweep to victory.

At the time, commentators passed this off as unreliable, citing the failure of pollsters to correctly identify the winner of the general election.

Yet this ripple of hope continued to spread forwards as Corbyn secured backing from unions, constituency parties and celebrities. The momentum was unstoppable.

It is worth remembering that the poll result revealed by Bush came five days before the event which is widely highlighted as “the day that Corbyn won.” With colourful graphics and charts, many are convinced that the other three candidates sealed their fates by abstaining on the Welfare Bill.

While there is no doubt that this act had huge implications for the rest of the campaign, Corbyn was on a winning streak even without this helpful own-goal from his rivals.

At this point, the mainstream media and Establishment figures caught up with what the rest of us already knew — Corbyn was changing the political landscape and carrying his followers with him, while his rivals sought for what remained of their conscience and so-called “Labour values.”

Upon the publication of a YouGov poll showing Jeremy Corbyn 17 points ahead of his nearest rival in mid-July, Labour’s self-appointed “grandees” felt compelled to intervene to stop the runaway Corbyn train.

The problem with Tony Blair telling Corbyn supporters to “get a heart transplant” is that it’s very difficult to take that advice seriously when its proponent appears not to have had a heart in the first place.

From Blair’s first intervention on July 22 to somewhere around mid-August, the right of the party seemed to wheel out a doom-laden figure on a daily basis, espousing tales of electoral wilderness, jumping off cliffs and political oblivion.

Yet with every word from the Blairites, Corbyn’s grassroots campaign grew stronger, without resorting to divisive and negative tactics. The day before voter registration closed, Corbyn was polling 53 per cent.

It’s not been smooth sailing, of course. Aside from the numerous Blairite scare tactics coming from within the Labour Party itself, Corbyn supporters endured weeks of mainstream media smears, George Osborne attempting to paint Corbyn as a threat to national security for his commitment to peace, and the now infamous “Labour purge,” which I briefly got mixed up in. (Huge thanks to new deputy leader Tom Watson and Richard Burgon MP for reading my outraged emails and providing practical advice for getting my vote back!)

Yet even these blatant attempts to stem the flow of hope have failed, with Corbyn increasing his lead over the other three candidates right up until the final moment and emerging with an overwhelming mandate for his leadership — winning in all three categories from members to union affiliates.

The Tories have already started work to undermine the new Labour leader, continuing to push the ludicrous notion that a Labour Party led by a man who wholeheartedly believes in peace is somehow a threat to Britain’s security, and spinning the breathtakingly hypocritical lie that Labour under Corbyn will be damaging to working people and families.

Expect fresh assaults every day — the Establishment is running scared and intends to rob the country of the hope that has sustained the Corbyn campaign from day one.

The spirit of unity, hope and optimism that has been ignited this summer must be carried forward in support of the new Labour leader as the old guard of media moguls and Bullingdon Boys line up to take a pop — winning this election was the easy part.

We know that Jeremy’s victory is just the first step in what will be a challenging five years in opposition, however, do take a moment today to celebrate this momentous and seismic shift in British politics — a shift for the better. Immediately after the announcement of the result veteran campaigner and staunch Corbyn supporter Harry Leslie Smith expressed his delight at the result.

“The future for Labour and the country is brilliant. Labour finally has a leader who wants to fight for the 99 per cent against this Tory-induced austerity.”

We of the 99 per cent must fight alongside Corbyn to be, as the man himself said in his victory speech, “a force for change in the world.”