Peak Farage

Ben Wildsmith

Until recently, we might have struggled to draw a comparison between Lindsay Whittle, Plaid Cymru’s victorious candidate in Caerphilly, and Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected Mayor of New York.

Superficially, I suppose, they don’t seem to have a great deal in common. Mamdani, for instance, doesn’t even have a lucky red jacket.

These two surfers of the international zeitgeist, however, have turned Abertridwr and Astoria into the frontlines of resistance to Trumpite populism. Perhaps a twinning arrangement could be instituted…

Interviews with Mamdani voters told a story we heard from Whittle’s supporters a couple of weeks ago.

‘He seems to feel our struggle,’ said one. ‘He’s from the community.’

As his opponents relied on ideological scare tactics – ‘He’s a Communist!’, and religious bigotry, ‘An Islamic Communist, the worst kind of Communist there is!’ – Mamdani focussed on bread-and-butter issues that determine the quality of people’s lives.

Pledging capped rents, and free access to childcare and public transport, he correctly identified the stuff that makes life in a city so difficult for people on ordinary wages. These are issues that exist in three dimensions, away from the online fantasies of confected culture wars. Aside from the professionally exploitative, they unite the working population.

The politics of unity seemed to be a distant memory just weeks ago. With Trump dominant across the Atlantic, and Farage seemingly on an unstoppable course for Downing Street, division was bearing fruit around the world.

Formerly moderate centre-right politicians like Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick were leaping into the MAGA furnace with abandon, so convinced were they that the tide had turned that way.

Keir Starmer’s flag-heavy presentation began to emphasise the concerns of the popular right to the exclusion of all other topics. The economy could sort itself out,

‘It’s the boats, stupid.’

Tik Tok

Nigel Farage, glinting with golden dust acquired in proximity to Washington’s Sun King, could see society falling at his feet. Gen Z, he told us, were for Reform UK. They, unlike the past-it Millennials, appreciated Nige’s Tik Tok rizz.

Look at them now. As soon as it became clear that hardly any young people had voted for Welsh Dave in Caerphilly, his boss announced that Reform would cut the minimum wage for young workers.

Far from shifting the demographic boundaries to create a new populist coalition of multigenerational voters, it seems that Reform will be scrapping over the same miserable old sods that Labour and the Tories always have.

Labour, annihilated in Caerphilly and seemingly facing an imminent economic meltdown, are dancing for their political lives. Wes Streeting tweeted out Mamdani’s victory speech, calling him ‘inspirational’ and noting ‘lessons for progressives the world over.’

Mamdani’s speech explicitly offered socialism as the cure to New York’s ills; he even namechecked Eugene Debs, who contested the 1920 presidential election from prison.

It is unthinkable that Streeting, and the rest of Labour’s ideologically nondescript careerists, would have been queuing up to endorse Mamdani even six weeks ago. Certainly, the mayor-elect would have been expelled from the PLP, if not the party, for his views under the current leadership.

Finished

So, we can divine from that the current leadership is finished. Labour’s more instinctive politicians are shuffling leftwards at a rate of knots so as not to go under the same bus that is hurtling towards Starmer and Reeves.

Away from media pundits and social media platforms, the conscientious majority of voters are beginning to make themselves heard.

The ceiling for populist right politics seems to be at around 35% of the electorate. If voters organise tactically around opposing candidates, that isn’t enough to win power here or in Westminster.

The winning ticket is locally focussed, optimistic, and disciplined. Whisper it for now, but we may have passed peak Farage.