IF YOU want to find the Jeremy Corbyn victory party, just follow the singing. “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!” reverberated down Seven Sisters Road in Finsbury Park late on Thursday night, long before the returns began to come in as supporters gathered in a local pub for a tense watch party.

When the result was finally announced, delivering a resounding victory to Corbyn, it was, as film director Ken Loach had predicted days earlier, “the most important result in this election.”

While the Labour Party celebrated the national landslide everyone had predicted, Corbyn’s win in Islington North, where he has served as a member of Parliament for 41 years, was viewed by supporters as a beachhead for the survival of democracy.

In the early hours of Friday morning, democracy won. Standing as an independent after being forced out of the Labour Party he once led, Corbyn trounced his Labour challenger, Praful Nargund, winning by 24,120 votes to 16,834. 

The virtually invisible Nargund had been parachuted in by the Labour Party as the heir apparent to a legacy he had done nothing whatever to earn. But the jewel of Islington North, a vibrant, multicultural community with a deep dedication to a man many know personally, was not about to be handed over to such a hollow pretender.

The relentless campaign by current Labour leader and now British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, to burn Corbyn politically at the stake, failed miserably. The matches simply wouldn’t light. An eleventh-hour attempt to flood Islington North with Labour canvassers also fizzled.

The zeal to oust Corbyn, said independent journalist Owen Jones at an election eve rally, was “driven by one thing alone and that’s spite.”

But spite failed, because good leadership is not about being willing to press the nuclear button or threatening to “remove” asylum-seekers and refugees. It is about “what kinder, gentler, more sensible, more inclusive politics can bring about,” said Corbyn in his victory speech.

It was that unwavering dedication to kindness and inclusivity that the voters of Islington North fully and enthusiastically embraced.

It was reflected by the elderly man emerging from a local mosque who clasped my hand to tell me: “Jeremy Corbyn is such a good man, a kind man, because he cares for each of us the same way no matter the colour of our skin. He does not set himself apart like some leaders.”

It was reflected in the words of an Iranian woman on the Andover estate who assured canvassers that her entire building was voting for Corbyn. “We love him,” she said. “I have four brothers here. We are all voting for him.”

It was reflected among the young children from Somalia, Algeria, the Caribbean and Bangladesh, who circled canvassers on their bicycles brandishing Corbyn posters and chanting: “Here we go, Corbyn, here we go!” before lining up for “Vote Corbyn” stickers.

And it was reflected among those who trudged tirelessly across the constituency day after day, knocking on every door multiple times to secure every possible vote.

One couple from Kent decided to canvass for Corbyn after a London surgical appointment was abruptly cancelled. Others travelled in from Bermondsey, Birmingham, Bristol and beyond.

It was a campaign for “trade unionists, the people in poor housing, the people in poverty and of course the people around the world fighting for their own liberation,” said RMT general secretary Mick Lynch on Thursday. “That’s why we stand with Jeremy Corbyn, and that’s why he’s different from the rest and that’s why they’re trying to do him in and that’s why we’re going to stop them.”

What many had feared would be a close-run race turned into a romp for Corbyn. But while Labour’s success nationally may be due to the electorate fleeing both left and right and not necessarily eagerly into the arms of Labour, Corbyn’s win was a positive affirmation of the values he has stood for throughout his political career. 

“The only way we solve the problems of our community is by uniting our communities,” said Corbyn after his victory was declared. “And our campaign was utterly determined to bring that degree of unity to it.”

It was a true grassroots campaign, he said, that “brought together people from all walks of life, from all ethnic communities, from all languages and from all ages in a determination to get something better in our society.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland, She is currently in London covering the election.