The rise of a New York socialist and the challenge to Labour here - Simon Wilson

The experience of New York mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani can offer some lessons for the Labour Party in New Zealand. Photo / Getty Images

THREE FACTS

• The New York Democratic Party has selected Zohran Mamdani, a “democratic socialist”, as its candidate for mayor.
• Populism and distrust of the establishment is sweeping through democratic countries everywhere.
• The Labour Party in New Zealand is considering what policy platform to take to the next election.

New York is on track to elect a self-proclaimed democratic-socialist and Muslim mayor. Stranger things have not often happened. Is there a lesson for Labour and Chris Hipkins? You bet.

In New York, the Democratic Party more or less controls the political life and in the party’s primary, the radical Zohran Mamdani beat the party’s establishment candidate, Andrew Cuomo.

A former state governor, Cuomo has a strong liberal record. He raised taxes on the wealthy, increased minimum wages and paid parental leave, introduced the strictest gun controls in the US, expanded Medicaid, legalised same-sex marriage and recreational cannabis and closed a nuclear power plant.

But it’s not enough to be liberal. Cuomo bungled the city’s Covid response with horrifying consequences and has faced multiple accusations of sex abuse. These same things have never held back a certain other politician from New York but, with very good reason, they hurt Cuomo.

Mamdani won on a platform that included more equitable tax, rent freezes and more public housing, free buses and more subway trains, city-run supermarkets (they already exist in Kansas and Wisconsin and are soon to open in Chicago and Atlanta), and community funding for mental health to ease the burden on police.

It’s not a revolutionary platform, despite what some people think. But the changes he promotes are far larger than the incrementalism common to governments of the centre-left. And he doesn’t own a car.

Zohran Mamdani celebrates with his wife Rama Duwaji after winning the Democratic primary in June. Photo / Shuran Huang/ New York Times

Also, from the did-you-know department, he’s the son of Indian filmmaker Mira Nair, whose movies include the acclaimed Salaam Bombay!, Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala. Cuomo, on the other hand, is the scion of one of those powerhouse political families that think they’re entitled to run everything in America.

It shouldn’t be taking the big party machines in our democracies so long to recognise that people have had enough of that. They’re pissed off, and with good reason, because as almost everyone knows, our governments are not delivering the security and prosperity they promise. They can’t or won’t control prices. Nor, despite the endless rhetoric, are they building a more productive economy or taking the climate crisis seriously.

Donald Trump is one of many populists around the world who know how to exploit this. But we shouldn’t think we’re immune in this country just because we don’t have a populist leader with enough mass appeal to sweep the establishment and or modern society away.

Winston Peters and David Seymour are still tails wagging the dog, despite their best efforts to become the dog itself. But someone new will come along. Why would we be immune from the biggest political trend in the democratic world today?

This is now the central challenge facing Labour. While populism is more common on the right, it doesn’t have to be that way. The populist response can swing left and Zohran Mamdani is not the only one proving it.

Countries as varied as Brazil, Norway, Slovakia, Spain, Bolivia and Tanzania, among many others, have governments on the left. In Britain, the fightback against Sir Keir Starmer’s austerity politics is having an impact.

In the US, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have teamed up on the Fighting Oligarchy Tour, building a mass movement against Trump and the timid centrism that gets nothing much done. “No Kings” is, as it always has been, a powerful democratic slogan.

Bernie Sanders out campaigning in the United States. Photos / 123rf

Is Labour going to be part of this global movement? If so, Hipkins has three big lessons to learn from the politics of the coalition Government.

The first is a positive lesson: that you can govern effectively when the different parties in a coalition decide what they agree on, and act accordingly. The second is a negative one: you lose the respect of the electorate if the tail keeps wagging the dog.

And the third? Get things done.

The grand irony of Labour’s 2020-2023 time in office was that although it didn’t have to manage any coalition partners, it got much less done than its mandate allowed.

If the Greens, in particular, had been in that Government, there might have been much more effective action on poverty and the climate. White elephant projects like underground light rail might have been replaced by much more realistic transport progress.

They would have been further to the left than the Ardern-Hipkins Government managed to be, and it might well have got them re-elected.

So now what? Many wealthy people say they wouldn’t mind paying more tax, but they don’t trust governments on the left to spend it well.

This is relevant and ridiculous. Relevant, because Labour does need to convince voters its lack of progress last time won’t happen again.

And ridiculous because, excuse me, have you seen what the current Government is doing? Many of its new laws were repeals of Labour laws, not new policy. Many have been badly conceived. It’s pouring time and money into virtue-signalling on crime, populist healthcare, the wrong parts of the education sector and a few massively expensive roads.

The Infrastructure Commission has just released its report outlining a framework for 30 years of progress. But the analysis it contains is almost the diametric opposite of Government policy, so Cabinet ministers barely talk about it.

In this context, the way ahead for Labour and its putative coalition partners is clear enough. It includes poverty action, a Green New Deal, equitable tax reform, housing for all and respect for the Treaty of Waitangi. And economic reform to boost productivity and reduce our reliance on low-return commodities.

These things should be the most sellable propositions in politics today.

Why aren’t they? Partly, it’s because enormous effort goes into discrediting them. From the wild fossil-fuelled rhetoric of Shane Jones, through the sombre neoliberal warnings of Nicola Willis, to the apocalyptic forecasting of Matthew Hooton, it’s a barrage.

They’re not hard to answer, though. Economist John Gascoigne provided a splendid account of the higher-taxing, economically powerful and socially resilient welfare state of Denmark in the Herald just yesterday.

Sadly, though, the New Zealand Labour leader has been more interested in learning from the British Labour Government. But learn what?

Labour leader Chris Hipkins risks failing at the next election without a programme that appeals to fed-up voters. Photo / Dean Purcell

The supposed “landslide” Labour won a year ago wasn’t what it seemed. Labour’s vote didn’t go up: under the very moderate Starmer it won fewer votes than in the previous election when it was led by the more radical Jeremy Corbyn. But because of the first-past-the-post system, Labour’s 34% of the vote produced 64% of the seats in Parliament.

The “landslide” happened because the Conservative vote collapsed to 24%, in favour of Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform Party, which rose to 15%. Populists, sweeping the establishment away.

Since then, the Conservatives have not recovered, while Labour has sunk to the low 20s and Reform has doubled its support. In all 13 of the most recently conducted polls, Reform was in the lead. It’s frightening.

What Labour should do, here as well as there, is not an idle question. Without a programme that appeals to fed-up voters, Hipkins will fail.

Getting shouted at by Shane Jones, Nicola Willis et al is not the main reason Labour is reluctant to embrace the most sellable propositions in politics today.

It’s scared of what money will do.

Starmer’s own Government was bluntly reminded of this last week when backbenchers forced it to abandon £4.8 billion ($10.9b) worth of welfare cuts. The bond market almost collapsed.

And manipulating the markets is not the only way money flexes its muscles to keep left-wing politics in check.

The Taxpayers’ Union runs a relentless and extremely well-funded attack on the welfare state. Wealthy donors favour the parties of the right: the Electoral Commission reported donations of $16.5m to the centre-right parties during 2023, the last election year, compared with $8.3m for the centre-left.

But this can be overcome. Zohran Mamdani faces the same challenge on steroids: the mighty Democratic establishment is aghast at his success to date.

How did he do it? With an army of 40,000 volunteers. And with a policy platform that gives voters hope.