In a development that has sent the centrist commentariat into a frenzy of pearl-clutching usually reserved for a spilled Earl Grey at the Dorchester, New York’s primary electorate has delivered a devastating verdict on the politics of cautious incrementalism. Candidates endorsed by the insurgent ‘Mamdani’ grouping have swept the board, signalling that the American left has finally decided to unshackle itself from the dead hand of ‘sensible’ Blairite triangulation.
Yes, while our own dear Labour Party continues its proud tradition of shadow-boxing with a spectre of socialism it dare not embrace, the Democrats have discovered that you can, in fact, offer a coherent alternative to austerity-lite managerialism without spontaneously combusting. The victors, a motley crew of democratic socialists, urban radicals and assorted firebrands, ran on a platform that would make Keir Starmer’s spinners reach for the smelling salts: rent controls, universal healthcare, defunding the police and a tax regime that might actually make the super-rich feel a trifle uncomfortable.
The reaction from our transatlantic cousins in the commentariat has been predictable. ‘Unelectable’ they cry, as if the current offering of shabby corporate centrism had any electoral mandate beyond the grudging acceptance of a man offered a choice between a swift kick and a slow drowning. ‘They’ll alienate the suburbs’ wail the wise heads, presumably forgetting that suburbs are now full of people who cannot afford a mortgage, let alone a private ambulance.
What this really represents is a decoupling from the peculiar British pathology that insists electoral victory must be purchased at the price of ideological surrender. The New York result suggests that a candidate can actually believe in something other than their own career prospects and still win. A radical notion, I know. The Mamdani-backed candidates didn’t run away from the word ‘socialist’ they wore it like a badge of honour, or at least as a defiant reply to a system that has treated them like something scraped off a shoe.
This is a direct challenge to the UK’s centre-left, which has spent the last decade perfecting the art of vacuous positioning. The lesson is stark: if you offer a choice between two flavours of same-day-old gruel, the electorate might just decide to burn down the kitchen. The New York sweep suggests a hunger for something spicier, something that actually tastes of change rather than the stale biscuit of managerial competence.
Of course, the wiseacres will point to the peculiarities of US primary systems, the low turnout, the vast sums of dark money sloshing about. And they will be right, to a point. But the direction of travel is unmistakeable. While Britain’s Labour leadership continues its obsessive search for the mythical ‘centre-ground’ that keeps shifting further right, the American left has rediscovered the radical notion that you can win by offering people something they actually want.
As a gin-soaked observer of political absurdity, I can only raise a glass to my new New York heroes. They have shown that the British disease of ‘pragmatic centrism’ is not a universal law. It is a choice. And, briefly, elsewhere, people are choosing differently. Whether this trend will survive contact with the full, corrupt apparatus of American politics remains to be seen. But for one glorious primary night, the news was not ‘more of the same.’ It was something approaching hope. And hope, in these grey days, is a radical act indeed.
