When a 34-year-old democratic socialist defeats a political dynasty in the nation’s largest city, we’re witnessing more than another electoral upset.

A repost from 13 November 2025

Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York reveals the collapse of the entire post-World War II political settlement that shaped Western democracies for three generations. The stable two-party systems, the broad catch-all coalitions, the predictable left-right oscillation, all of it is fragmenting. We’re watching the return of the fractious, multi-polar politics that characterised democracies before 1945.

The post-war period was the anomaly, not the norm. For seven decades, Western democracies enjoyed unusual stability built on expanding prosperity, rising home ownership, and intergenerational mobility that allowed major parties to construct enormous coalitions spanning classes and regions. That world is dead. Housing wealth is concentrated. Intergenerational mobility has reversed. The economic conditions that sustained catch-all parties have evaporated, and the party systems themselves are splintering.

What’s replacing it isn’t just political disagreement, it’s mutual contempt for the entire system. Gen Z’s structural collapse toward left populism is the most dramatic manifestation of this fragmentation, but it’s also occurring on the right side of politics as well.

However, conservatives who think they’ve found their answer in Trump and Reform UK are catastrophically misreading the landscape. Yes, right-wing populism has grown. But look where: outside big cities, in declining towns, among much older angry voters watching their world disappear. Trump and Reform succeeded by harvesting the rage of Boomers and older Gen X in urban and rural areas — places losing population........

© Pearls and Irritations