If you want a Scottish Mamdani, Start here

Zohran Mamdani has shaken up the politics of the US with his win in the New York mayoral elections despite and even in spite of those who should have been allies within his pattern and definitely in spite of Donald Trump’s smear campaign and threats to cut funding to the city unless they vote for his preferred candidate - something that would mark a further dark turn for American democracy should he follow through on that threat.

Mamdani’s policies and his excellent ground and social media campaign are what won the day and will likely be closely studied now by Left political campaigns both in America and elsewhere to find inspiration to push back against the rising Right.

His polices in particular appear radical for the US but are not quite so far outwith the Overton Window in Scotland - almost all of them are policies that Common Weal have advocated and campaigned for and many could be implemented in Scotland under devolved powers should we want them.

1. Rent Freeze

Scotland’s rent cap is insufficient as it all but guarantees that landlords will implement above inflation rent rises for the foreseeable future (the cap allows a maximum increase of 1% above inflation or 6% whichever is lower). This will do little to prevent rent pressures from getting worse and will do nothing to help tenants who are already struggling with high rents. Common Weal has advocated for a points-based rent control system that would cap rents based on the quality of the home, encouraging landlords to ensure that their tenants are not suffering from fuel poverty on top of high rents. We’d then push for enough social housing built using sustainable finance models to allow private tenants to move to the social rented sector which would force landlords to bring rents down to affordable and competitive rates.

2. Public Groceries

In August, we celebrated the UK’s government’s pilot study to open a public-owned grocery in Inverness, designed along a similar model to the network of such groceries that Mamdani campaigned on. These would be targeted at areas suffering from deprivation and lack of access to good food. We would go further and advocate for networks of public and community owned kitchens and restaurants where anyone could go to get a cheap, nutritious and locally produced meal and, importantly, to meet others in their community and to start to rebuild the social links that we’ve lost in our atomised “Me First” culture. You can read more about our food policies here and in our book Sorted.

3. Childcare

If anything, Common Weal goes even further on childcare than Mamdani does. His policy of extending the current system there of free childcare for up to five year olds is a substantial expansion of the current means-tested system there though we are strong supporters of the concept of universalism. We have advocated for a more comprehensive system of “wrap-around” care to ensure that it meets the needs not just of the children but of parents too - especially those whose working hours don’t match the service hours of conventional commercial childcare nurseries. One of the issues that Mamdani will surely face as we do here is the problem of profit in care. Any money extracted by care companies is money that is not being spent on the child. This can take the form of profits extracted by private companies or - in the “non-profit” sector - via paying executives exorbitant salaries or extracting money from non-profit shell companies to for-profit parent companies via “loans” or rents charged on buildings and other “service fees”. All extractive profit in care must end.

4. Free buses

Common Weal is a proud ally of campaigns for free and public owned public transport like Get Glasgow Moving. Mass public transport benefits everyone from users who can travel more cheaply, to residents near roads who must suffer the pollution caused by traffic jams of cars containing one person each, to the people who must still drive a car but now no longer have to sit in said traffic jams because everyone else is on the bus. We championed and helped to win the devolution of powers from the Scottish Government in 2017 that allowed Local Authorities to launch their own local bus companies (Edinburgh, notably, managed to keep theirs throughout the wave of privatisations that killed the rest and Lothian Buses is an example to follow) but we still hold that more needs to be done to give Councils the resources to actually launch and run those companies until the point that they become self-sustaining.

5. Affordable Housing

In addition to our Good Houses for All paper aimed at making social housing cheaper, and our rent controls polices designed to make private rentals cheaper, we also advocate for taking the inflationary bubble out of house ownership. The UK’s “housing ladder” model serves only to drive prices up, to inflate the wealth of the already wealthy and to lock almost everyone else out of sustainable housing.

As well as pushing for enough social housing to disrupt the private renting market, we’d build enough to return social housing to its place as the first choice of housing for most people. We would also reform Council Tax to make housing more affordable for the vast majority of people - around 90% of households would get a tax cut under our proposal to replace Council Tax with a fair and proportional Property Tax.

Further savings could be found via aggressive land reform and by launching a National Housing Company to take the profit out of construction. You can watch more about our housing policies in this extended interview here.

Conclusion

Mamdani’s win this week is will be a massive boost to Left movements trying to push back against the rising tide of authoritarianism and he shows that with grounded yet radical policies that campaign can be popular enough to create a mass movement. Scotland could have one here too if we want it. Common Weal has shown that we already have the polices. All we need now is the campaign to vote for.

And donate forget to donate to us, so that we can continue to create and support policies like the ones that just won New York.