First came the centrist argument. Sure, Harris hadn’t been exceptional. She hadn’t answered the urgent questions of an America exhausted by inequality and declining living standards. She offered no more than Joe Biden. But still: shouldn’t we have held our noses and backed her, just to stop Donald Trump?
Harris’s continuity politics fixed absolutely nothing, they said. Her defeat needed to be a clarifying moment, ending compromise candidates once and for all. If the left ever wants to win again, it needs to offer something radical.
On the surface, it’s an overdue socialist resurgence and a rallying cry for the left. But what truly made Mamdani stand out wasn’t what he said, but the way he said it. He used his platform not to perform, but to explain. He offered thoughtful commentary on the everyday struggles of New Yorkers. In that sense, he has more in common with populists like Donald Trump or Nigel Farage than many on the left would care to admit: speaking directly to voters’ material concerns.
This is where the UK left should be paying sharp attention. Yes, there are some ideological lessons. While Mamdani hardly advocated for full-blown Marxism, he wasn’t afraid of loudly offering leftist solutions. But this was, it turns out, an easy task. Because rent caps, minimum wage increases and hiking corporate taxes aren’t fringe ideas anymore – they’re answers to real problems.
Labour, by contrast, speaks in bloodless, technocratic terms, all bond markets, fiscal rules, and GDP per capita, while dodging real reform of the tax system, rampant profiteering, and a broken model of privatised utilities. Who cares about economic headroom when a box of cereal, a pack of sanitary towels, and a tub of butter costs more than 10 quid?
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He sounded like a person, not a press release. He refused to be dragged into hollow culture wars and identity debates. He stayed on message: equality, fairness, justice. Meanwhile, Labour is so terminally in thrall to irate swing voters that it buries everything under a fog of tepid managerialism. But this triangulation simply doesn’t wash with voters who feel abandoned by Westminster politicians.
Meanwhile, Labour is cracking under the weight of its internal tensions. Starmer’s welfare proposals have sparked open rebellion, and the party is governed with an iron fist. Without internal democracy and compromise, there can be no collective vision, and without that, there will be nothing for the left to unite around.
If Starmer wants to survive this term, he should take note: the era of mild, indecisive centrism is over. Voters don’t want managed decline. They’re crying out for a politics with purpose, and a leader who means what they say and dares to act on it.
Zoe Grünewald is a journalist, broadcaster and political commentator
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