BACK in May 2015, we lost our second general election under a safe centrist leader putting forward a bland centrist manifesto. 

The right of the party jumped eagerly on the defeat as an excuse to push Labour back to the “good old days” of Tony Blair when Britain backed illegal wars, PFI, privatisation and tuition fees. 

An era when five million Labour voters became politically homeless and Scotland became essentially lost to us. 

Myself and another activist, Beck Barnes, who I “met” online in a Facebook page set up for Labour voters and members to come together to mourn the 2015 defeat, were not having any of it. 

We started a petition calling for an anti-austerity candidate to stand for Labour leader — and that’s when we discovered we were far from alone. Even Jeremy Corbyn signed our petition, shortly before declaring his candidacy!

Jeremy, like many others, didn’t expect to win in 2015, let alone still be leader four years later. 

He stood to shift the debate away from the narrative that austerity was essential and that immigration and ordinary struggling people were to blame for the country’s woes. 

And boy, did he shift the debate. Do people honestly think “austerity” would be a dirty word right now if Corbyn had lost the leadership to one of the other candidates? 

Do people think the scare we gave the Tories in 2017 has nothing to do with the recent Tory pledges on public spending and infrastructure? 

We might know it’s just a token nod to anti-austerity to help them win a general election, but trust me, even that causes them great resentment, anguish and pain.

That’s why they will do literally anything to win this general election — lie, cheat and smear profusely, and win they might, with Brexit and Thatcher-loving Farage giving them fair wind to sail to victory. 

However, even if we lose — and like millions of you up and down the country, I’m praying to the gods of justice, humanity and compassion to make sure we don’t — we won’t really have lost. 

A general election is not a full stop. Our growing and powerful movement won’t suddenly disappear on December 13 if the Tories win.

Corbyn won’t have gone through an unprecedented level of attacks and smears for four years for nothing. His leadership dusted the apathy cobwebs off millions of people. 

His leadership has marked a significant sea change in British political history. Thanks to Jeremy, hundreds of thousands of people have become politically engaged and we are not going back into our box.

When right-wing commentators have noted a “lack of enthusiasm” in this campaign, they are as usual reading us all wrong. It’s not a lack of enthusiasm they are detecting — it’s anxiety, fear and dread. 

We know what another five years of the Tories means to this country. We know that whether they take us out of the EU or not, it’s still the same old Tories in power, the ones who never cut working-class people into a share of the spoils but always make us shoulder the burdens of loss. 

The same old Tories who dream about an NHS-free future, who sneer at us and hold us in contempt. 

If they were promising to take us to an exciting new planet, it would only be to exploit us for their own ends. 

We know this is the fight of our lives and that makes us tense. It’s not a lack of enthusiasm we are suffering from. It’s the opposite — it’s excitement over how wonderful Britain could be under a Corbyn-led government, and worry it won’t happen. 

That’s why activists have been working tirelessly for five long weeks to try to counteract the biased media, including unfortunately the BBC, with face-to-face conversations up and down this country. We are fighting for hope.

It is important to acknowledge that this general election is not like any other. Without millions of voters looking at the parties through a Brexit prism, I’d be 100 per cent confident of victory. And that means we must not be derailed by a loss. 

If we stay on the track we are on, it’s not a matter of if we win from the left, but when, and with the distinct possibility the Tories could start unravelling over the next year or so, that could come sooner than you think. 

So keep fighting comrades. Not just until 10pm tomorrow, but after, win, lose or draw. Victory will be ours! Hope will win!