The hours of daylight are shrinking at the same rate as Keir Starmer’s popularity, the shops are full of Christmas tat far too early, everyone’s hard up, fed up and just glad they’re not David Lammy this week. So it is cheering to see spontaneous joy at the election of New York’s mayor, 34 year old Zohran Mamdani who got more votes – at least 1.03 million – than all the other candidates combined. The relatively unknown fringe candidate galvanised his campaign by recruiting more than 100,000 volunteers, slick social media and a focus on affordability, the biggest issue in one of the most expensive cities on earth. The Democratic socialist promised to freeze rents, provide free buses and affordable grocery stores. He will become the youngest mayor of the city in over a century and the first Muslim. A powerful and charismatic speaker with echoes of Obama, Mamdani talked about ‘Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns: these are not hands that have been allowed to hold power.’ Take note Starmer, Reeves and co, that sounds and means so much more than the bland and meaningless ‘working people’.
Elsewhere more traditional, moderate Democrats won gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia while in the Netherlands another young, charismatic politician, Rob Jetten beat the far-right firebrand Geert Wilders. Jetten’s victory may be bittersweet as the complexities of forming a coalition, quite possibly with some right-wing parties may take months and even then, stability isn’t guaranteed. The main themes of the Dutch election were housing, healthcare and immigration while during the last one Wilders dominated by exclusively focusing on immigration. Both Jetten and Mamdani offered optimism and hope but one of the takeaways from the Netherlands is that the more progressive centre parties didn’t allow the campaign to be hijacked by a single far right talking point and instead concentrated on other issues.
Back in Blighty, the new leader of the Greens, Zack Polanski seems to have connected with the electorate, particularly younger people, party membership is up and apparently increases every time he appears on TV or radio. His populism and policies may deter the more moderate Greens who could seek sanctuary in the slightly moth-eaten old sofa that is the Lib Dems, quietly growing in numbers, power and influence.
Polanski, Mamdami and Jetten are able to connect with voters, they are charismatic and, some would argue, populists too but the message of hope, energy and optimism is attractive to people. As polling guru Professor Sir John Curtice said of Polanski “…..can communicate….and handles difficulty quite well,”
No one’s going to be saying that about Lammy or Reeves after this week.
