UK’s Corbyn: I told Bernie Sanders he gave me ‘campaign ideas’

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn says Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called him the day after the British election last month, and Corbyn gave him credit for many “campaign ideas.”

“Bernie called me the day after our election here. I was half asleep watching something on television,” Corbyn said in an interview with The Intercept published Thursday. “And Bernie comes on to say, well done on the campaign, and I was interested in your campaigning ideas. Where did you get them from? And I said, well, you, actually.”

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s conservative party lost its parliamentary majority in the vote she called in June. Corbyn’s Labor opposition, meanwhile, picked up dozens of seats.

Corbyn said he would tell any supporters of Sanders’ presidential bid who are feeling frustrated with the Trump administration not to be discouraged, because at the end of the day, “human beings want to do things together.”

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Corbyn said his campaign was initially “in a difficult political position” in May’s snap election, but put forward a manifesto that was collective in its approach and specific in what it would do, concerning ending university tuition fees and raising minimum income.

Corbyn added that the collective approach resulted in “the biggest increase in vote for our party since the second World War.” 

“And we gained the support and participation of a very large number of people,” he said. “We didn’t win the election. I wish we had. But in that campaign, we changed the debate in exactly the same way Senator Bernie Sanders’ intervention into Democratic nomination did mobilize a very large number of people.”

Sanders remains the most popular senator in the country with 75 percent of Vermont voters approving of his job performance, according to a recent poll.