Zohran – he’s not the only one! Mamdani, wins New York: The power and peril of perfect communication

Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York proves that disciplined, authentic communication - anchored in a single clear idea - still wins in politics, even in a volatile, cynical age. Whilst clarity without delivery risks turning hope into disillusion, as the UK left would do well to remember, there are greater lessons to learn from the night’s other races.

Mamdani’s campaign punctured convention, not with data models or algorithmic precision, but with a smile, an intrinsic understanding of how to capture and hold attention, and with a message you could etch into a brownstone or print onto a giant foam finger at a Knicks game: affordability, housing, safety, childcare, change. He cultivated a community, not a coalition. 

At the start of the year, polls gave Madani a one-percent chance. What they missed wasn’t polling error - it was that Mamdani was saying something real and saying it well. His message discipline was relentless – legendary political strategist James Carville said it was the best he’s ever seen. Every answer bent back to one promise: to deliver material change for ordinary New Yorkers. No triangulation or nervous tacking to the centre. It was the kind of communication that is clear about its winners and losers, turns apathy into loyalty and loyalty into turnout. That’s the lesson for strategists everywhere: a clear message in a quality vessel goes a very long way.

Still, charisma only wins elections; compromise keeps you in power. Mamdani has already shown flickers of pragmatism zeal - meeting with business leaders like Rudin, Bloomberg and Soros, and softening his stance on policing. He has framed this as evolution, not betrayal. 

Here in the UK, Labour should pay attention. Some of its MPs have celebrated Mamdani’s win with a student-like reverence. As Times Radio’s Patrick Maguire noted, there are few true parallels here. Mamdani’s New York was already a progressive city. The more relevant lessons for Labour may lie in the Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia - public servants who campaigned on competence, delivery, and cost-of-living issues. Labour’s own challenge remains clarity. Starmer’s managerial centrism makes Mamdani’s insurgent clarity look almost revolutionary. Yet the forces that propelled him are building here too, particularly ahead of next year’s local elections. 

Who in Britain can match Mamdani’s insurgency? Perhaps Zack Polanski of the Greens - articulate, idealistic, and unafraid of confrontation. For Starmer and Labour, the comfort is that there is still time. Charisma can win an election; message discipline wins a mandate. The question, as always, is how long before a hopeful outsider becomes the incumbent everyone blames. And whether they’ve done enough by then to make belief stick.

We now live in an attention economy of belief, where politics is theatre with moral consequence. The audience wants conviction, not calibration. As John Gray reminds us, we can’t go back to the old world - the triangulated age of Clinton, Blair, and Obama, that Bermuda Triangle of hope. The task now is simple but brutal: take people with you on a disciplined offer and then make good on it.