Liberal politicians outside the US have watched Zohran Mamdani\u2019s election win as New York mayor with interest, with some saying it offers lessons in how to combat the rise of rightwing populism around the world.<\/p>\n
The London mayor, Sadiq Khan<\/a>, congratulated his US contemporary. \u201cNew Yorkers faced a clear choice, between hope and fear, and just like we\u2019ve seen in London, hope won,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Khan was also the first Muslim mayor<\/a> of his city and has attracted similar hostility from Donald Trump. Unlike Mamdani, however, Khan is a career politician rather than a newcomer.<\/p>\n Another Labour politician, the MP Luke Charters, said Mamdani\u2019s victory \u201cshows us how we can defeat rightwing populism here in the UK: deliver real solutions, not empty slogans\u201d. Mamdani\u2019s main campaign tactic has been to pledge to make New York<\/a> more affordable.<\/p>\n Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who sits as an independent MP, said Mamdani had succeeded in igniting \u201ca grassroots campaign<\/a>, built on the radical idea that everyone deserves to live in dignity\u201d.<\/p>\n Mamdani, 34, was born in Uganda to Indian parents, moved to New York with his family at the age of seven and became a US citizen in 2018.<\/p>\n The Times of India noted that Mamdani quoted India\u2019s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru<\/a>, in his victory speech, saying: \u201cA moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new.\u201d<\/p>\n Mamdani celebrated his win the same way he had campaigned, the newspaper said: \u201cLoud, defiant, and unmistakably Indian.\u201d<\/p>\n There was some disappointment in Israel, which Mamdani has accused of carrying out a genocide \u2013 a position rejected by the Israeli government but shared by genocide experts and scholars<\/a> as well as a UN inquiry<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cNew York will never be the same again,\u201d wrote Amichai Chikli, the Israeli minister of diaspora affairs. \u201cThe city is walking, eyes open, into the abyss into which London has already plunged.\u201d<\/p>\n