Zohran Mamdani victory shows how to defeat rightwing populism, says UK MP | Zohran Mamdani
Liberal politicians outside the US watched with interest as Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral election; Some said it offered lessons on how to combat right-wing populism, which is on the rise around the world.
London mayor Sadiq Khan congratulated his US contemporary. “New Yorkers faced a clear choice between hope and fear, and just as we saw in London, hope won,” he wrote.
Khan was also his city’s first Muslim mayor and had drawn similar hostility from Donald Trump. But unlike Mamdani, Khan is a career politician rather than a newcomer.
Luke Charters MP, another Labor politician, said Mamdani’s victory “shows us how we can defeat right-wing populism here in the UK: that we can deliver real solutions, not empty slogans”. Mamdani’s main campaign tactic was promising to make New York more affordable.
Former Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who serves as an independent MP He said Mamdani had managed to ignite a “grassroots campaign”It is built on the radical idea that everyone deserves to live with dignity.”
Mamdani, 34, was born in Uganda to Indian parents, moved to New York with her family at the age of seven and became a US citizen in 2018.
The Times of India noted: Mamdani quotes Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime ministerIn his victory speech he said: “There comes a moment, but it is very rare in history, when we step from the old into the new.”
The newspaper said Mamdani celebrated her victory the same way she campaigned: “Loud, defiant and unmistakably Indian.”
There was some disappointment in Israel, which Mamdani accused of committing genocide; It’s a view rejected by the Israeli government but shared by genocide experts and scholars, as well as the UN investigation.
“New York will never be the same again,” wrote Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister of diaspora affairs. “The city is walking with its eyes open towards the abyss into which London has already fallen.”
Roughly a million jews They live in and around New York City, the largest population of Jews in a city outside Israel. Mamdani has made outreach to Jewish communities a key part of his campaign and has spoken out against anti-Semitism. He faced Islamophobia from Democratic and Republican politicians.
In his victory speech, Mamdani told cheering supporters: “We will build a City Hall that stands steadfastly with Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism.”
Trump intervened in the election race at the 11th hour on Tuesday, smearing Mamdani as an “anti-Semite” on the social media platform and calling all Jews who voted for him “stupid.”
CNN exit poll suggested Mamdani He may have won a third of the Jewish vote.
