The British election result is historic for a number of reasons, not least of which because it served as a test case against the long-offered argument that turning left is electoral suicide for a major political party.

But what made it particularly significant is that no major party candidate in the Western world in recent history has faced the kind of consistent, widespread, stubborn, and (in Corbyn’s case) often dishonest opposition from both the media and the political class — and come out on top regardless.

It was always a given that the Right would do its best to discredit Corbyn, particularly the famously vicious right-wing British press, which has never met a Labour leader it didn’t attempt to portray as a buffoon. But what makes Corbyn’s sudden ascent so unexpected is that the attempts to undermine and delegitimize him came from not just the Right, but from across the political spectrum.