Crowding within the Plaza de la Constitución in Mexico City, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans gathered to hear Claudia Sheinbaum deliver a radical 100-point programme for government on October 1st, the day of her inauguration as the country’s first female president. Joined on stage by 100 women of indigenous and Afro-descent, Sheinbaum, with characteristically strong, slicked back hair, spoke powerfully to the nation with a programme of sweeping reforms: a national care service for pregnant women and mothers, the opening of popular pharmacies, building 3000km of new railway to reach across the continent, key surgeries for cataracts and knee issues promised on a mass scale. But one pledge in particular – that of hiring 20,000 doctors to visit the homes of every elderly person in Mexico and deliver home care and attention – garnered headlines.
The language of the speech was just short of revolutionary. This is the “Fourth Transformation,” says Sheinbaum, begun by her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (also known as AMLO, who left office with a 70% approval rating), the last “Transformation” being that of the 1910-17 Mexican Revolution against the country’s dictator. Modena, the party of Sheinbaum and AMLO, took to the electorate with a message of “For the good of all, first the poor” in June, winning a landslide victory on the back of the previous administration’s achievements that saw a doubling of the minimum wage and poverty levels fall from 44% to 37% of Mexicans in just four years.
Against the light of hope inspired by Mexico’s popular leadership, the doom and gloom of Westminster appears all the more depressing. The Winter Fuel Allowance for pensioners has been sacrificed on the illusory altar of Rachel Reeves “fiscal rules,” Starmer warns of an incoming “painful” winter budget at the end of the month, the government vows to force the sick and the disabled back into employment by removing financial support and offering “fat jabs” of Ozempic. Where Sheinbaum looks to a popular movement to keep her programme afloat, Labour has turned to Blackrock, Lloyds Bank, and Google. One wonders, in the absence of a state willing to make the investments and a private sector largely uninterested in anywhere but the financial City of London, where the oft-touted economic growth that Labour promises will materialise. Starmer faces unprecedented unpopularity and a national economy in seemingly terminal decline. The Prime Minister should look to the Mexican example, of the Keynesian investment dream that propelled AMLO to national adoration, and harness the significant powers of the UK state to address the structural rot faced nationwide with a “New Deal” style programme of economic relief.
“Claudia Sheinbaum (conferencia de prensa)” by Ernesto Toboa is licensed under CC BY 2.0.