‘The UK will never have a Mamdani moment’

It is the morning of 5th November. Zohran Mamdani is elected Mayor of New York City, and some 3,400 miles away, Westminster is awash with noise. Noises like the sound of parliamentary staffers checking out their Amazon carts full of lapel microphones, and the sound of the commentariat waxing lyrical about lessons from Mamdani’s victory. Around Portcullis House there is perhaps even a buzz and an excitement – and You can’t move on College Green for Tiktokers. What happened? 

There is a kind of intellectual tug-of-war between camps on the left about how to answer this question. Was it – as Lucy Powell has argued – his economically populist message and politics of hope? Was it his willingness to speak out on issues like Gaza and housing justice? Or was it, as Andrew Cuomo argued, his social-media strategy and snazzy vertical videos? These are important questions – and in a political moment that (for progressives) feels tarnished with disillusionment and gloom, it is hard not to take small victories where we can. 

But instead of over-indexing on the positives, we may do well to examine what is not replicable. Indeed, it is all very well doing a post-match analysis, but what is the point of ‘learning’ such lessons in a political environment in which it is impossible to apply them? 

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In February 2025, after Zohran Mamdani had just announced his campaign for mayor, he was polling at one per cent. New Yorkers hardly knew who he was, let alone planned to vote for him. What is more, he carried little political capital as a one-term assemblyman. Yet his eventual victory turned out more than two million New York voters – the highest-turnout election since 1969 – bucking decades of participation decline in municipal races and energising swathes of the national party. 

As things stand, the UK will never have a Mamdani moment. Why? 

Mamdani relentlessly focused on the one thing that candidates should care about – reaching his voters. To do so, he experimented; he established himself as separate from a floundering national brand, he decided what was important to the voters he cared about and he spoke about those things. Most importantly, he was rewarded for it. This is, of course, the beauty of a primary system – and it does not take a genius to notice that it is a system we do not have here. 

Rather, our system of government and party infrastructures are hard-wired to protect against the style of insurgent politics that propelled Mamdani to victory. A certain kind of logic pervades the ways that our politicians emerge, are incubated, and endure in our politics, and our parliamentary system perpetuates a culture that orients itself inwards. We reward talking to other politicians, the political class, and the Westminster press pack – not voters. What counts as ‘success’, therefore, is often the ability to manage colleagues, not to move crowds. 

Within this structure lies a self-reinforcing loop of professional advancement. MPs who play by the institutional rules are rewarded with proximity to power, while those who cultivate public enthusiasm risk being marked as unserious. As such, the material incentives to reach voters and communicate in ways that resonate with them are few and far between.

Candidate selection mirrors this logic. The process favours reliability, discretion, and ideological conformity over communicative flair or local authenticity. Those most capable of reaching and inspiring the people progressives most need to reach are rarely the ones given the chance to stand, let alone rise. Once inside Parliament, promotion has depended on mastery of the brief and loyalty to the line, not the ability to persuade or energise a public. 

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This is a structure based around what it takes to govern in a parliamentary system – moving MPs through one door not another, or striving for internal party consensus to deliver manifesto promises. It is a system of governing I am in favour of. But we must not mistake this system of governing for a framework of leading. 

Take the Labour deputy-leader election. Months of coverage in the build-up would have you believe that this was a seismic vote, a major referendum on the direction of the Labour Party and the mood of the membership. In the end, the member turnout was radically low. For a voter base desperately in need of energising, this was alarming. 

The deputy-leadership process mirrored the same logic of Westminster success – curry favour with other MPs, party giants, and special interest groups. Whittle names down to a desired shortlist and eventually present it to the base. Where is the insurgent energy in that? While Mamdani was able to prioritise talking to voters from the inception of his campaign, Lucy Powell and Bridget Phillipson’s campaigns were only possible with the endowment of their fellow MPs. By the time their pre-selected names were put to voters – seven weeks after they both announced their candidacy – most of their time had been directed to corralling internal favour, not building public energy or enthusiasm beyond Westminster. Is it any wonder that turnout was a measly 16.6%? 

It is certainly not the case that Labour lacks the talent, creativity, or charisma to connect with today’s voters. But it remains a fact that our system insulates against the emergence of these qualities, stemming the organic rise of those most talented at connecting with their audiences. Until we change that, and start rewarding the qualities and positions that voters want with promotions, responsibilities, and more air time, we will lose it. That means giving candidates the space in their districts, towns, and constituencies to figure out what those are, too. 

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Granted, we cannot import a primary system into our Parliamentary politics, but we can export some of the elements of a primary system that ensure that parties regenerate, stars rise, and voters hope. Such an approach to empowering political voices can be treated as an experiment – give it time, see what does well, and then, crucially, reward it. Without these changes, we may be wasting our time ‘learning’ any further lessons from the victories of 5 November. 

Otherwise, the UK will never have a Mamdani moment. Maybe we do not want one. But in such moments, it never hurts to wonder if our political system is now designed to resist the very energies that might one day save it – the energies of persuasion, participation, and play.

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