Mamdani victory fires up Europe's left against right-wing surge at home

By Catarina Demony and Sarah Marsh

LONDON/BERLIN (Reuters) -The blistering rise of Zohran Mamdani to become mayor of New York City has offered encouragement to left-wing parties across Europe that an unabashedly radical agenda could help turn the tide against right-wing forces at home.

Parties from London to Berlin cheered Mamdani, a 34-year-old self-described democratic socialist whose viral videos and promise of rent controls and taxing the rich in a city seen as a beacon of global capitalism struck a chord with voters.

Parties like Germany's The Left party and Britain's Greens hope to garner momentum from Mamdani's win, signalling they would not dilute their policies or be sucked into the right-wing battleground of migration.

It could also give food for thought to established left-wing parties like Britain's ruling Labour party, which has tanked in the polls since its landslide election victory last year, and Germany's Social Democrats (SPD). 

Zack Polanski, who this year became the first Jewish and openly gay leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, has drawn comparisons to Mamdani for his use of social media and calls for a wealth tax to reduce inequality. 

An ecstatic Polanski told Reuters that Mamdani's victory shows "hope has triumphed over hate".

"This is important - not just because it's important for New York but actually I think this resonates throughout the world. But this is about improving people's lives, recognising the inequality that lies both at the heart of New York, but frankly, around much of the world."

"And this is about saying: let's lower people's bills and tax multimillionaires and billionaires," said Polanski, whose party has risen in the polls after winning just four seats in 2024.  

Cost of living is a major focus in Britain where food price inflation for example hit 19% in March 2023, the highest in 45 years, and finance minister Rachel Reeves has signalled "hard choices" and possible tax rises to come. 

LEFT WANTS TO BUILD MOMENTUM

In a polarised political landscape, Germany's Left party was a surprise package in federal elections in February and hopes to build on its strong showing next year in local elections, including in the capital Berlin. Like other European leftists, its members visited New York during the campaign.

“The problems people in New York face are very similar to those we hear about at people’s doorsteps here in Germany. Rents are unaffordable, and prices for food, electricity, heating, and public transport are rising faster than wages," Jan van Aken, head of Germany's Left party, told Reuters.

"We are in close contact with Zohran Mamdani and his team and are learning from each other. His campaign is like a blueprint for next year's elections in Berlin," he said in an email. "Zohran Mamdani's victory gives us momentum.”

Set to become New York's first Muslim mayor and the youngest since 1892, Mamdani's social media posts resonated on both sides of the Atlantic with voters hit by rising inflation and stretched public services since the pandemic. 

"I'm freezing ... your rent," Mamdani told New Yorkers after plunging into icy waters off Coney Island in January in suit and tie.

Germany's Left is also pushing rent controls and free or heavily subsidised transport, and uses blunt messaging. "We're taking on the rich. Nobody else is doing that," said one of its campaign posters.

Leftists in France, which is gearing up for presidential elections by 2027, were also inspired. 

"Finally, a lesson for the left everywhere: it is not by watering down economic liberalism that we win, but by fighting it tooth and nail," Manon Aubry, from the far-left France Unbowed party (LFI), wrote on X. 

COST OF LIVING FOCUS

Asked what lessons left-wing parties should draw from Mamdani's victory, Polanski said the cost of living mattered above all else and that progressive parties must offer real solutions to it.

More established mainstream parties have also taken heart from Mamdani's victory. 

"For us in the SPD, this means we must refocus more strongly on what is at the heart of our work – social policies for the majority of society," SPD lawmaker Rasha Nasr told Reuters. 

The SPD, while still in power, scored its worst result since World War Two at the last election. 

"In the last federal election campaign, we too often tried to engage in debates that were, by that point, hardly winnable on a factual basis, for example, regarding migration policy."

Philipp Koeker, political scientist at the University of Hanover, said it showed parties who want to win elections "or do not want to lose voters to the populist far right – should stick to their own core issues and present their own solutions to current problems rather than imitate the far right by adopting anti-immigration policies."

Having won on a radical agenda, Mamdani will face challenges putting his pledges into action. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to cut funding to New York City. Some, including on Wall Street, hope and expect Mamdani will be unable to force through drastic change.  

“Now comes the hard part," said James Schneider, former director of strategic communications for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.

"Turning that electoral majority into real power — improving lives from City Hall while transforming his 100,000-strong volunteer army into community organisers in every neighbourhood of the city.”

(Reporting by Catarina Demony and Elizabeth Piper in London, Sarah Marsh and Holger Hansen in Berlin, Elizabeth Pineau in Paris, Andrew Gray in Brussels; writing by Matthias Williams)