The timing of the socialist mayor's attempt to seize the King's crown jewels is no accident

Lee Cohen
Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:19:03 +0000
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Socialist New York Mayor Mamdani is “Little Sadiq” in his Resentful Intrusion on the King’s Jewels. Both Should Focus on Their Own Troubled Cities Instead of Critiquing British and American Exceptionalism

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has cast himself as Sadiq Khan’s transatlantic echo. Just as the London mayor once strained every sinew to undermine Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain, the new Democratic Socialist mayor of New York has seized the King’s American tour to demand the return of the Koh-i-Noor diamond.

The state visit has unfolded as a tour de force of British and American exceptionalism. In the view of many observers, Mamdani’s intervention exposes the resentful progressive smallness that now governs two of the West’s greatest cities.

In Washington, the King addressed a joint session of Congress to sustained bipartisan applause. President Trump was visibly moved by his words during the visit.

The pageantry and substance alike affirmed the depth of the bilateral alliance at a moment when both nations face determined adversaries abroad and institutional decay at home. The New York leg maintained that momentum.

At the 9/11 memorial, the King and Queen laid a wreath with quiet dignity. The Queen advanced her literacy initiative at the New York Public Library, presenting a gift that spoke of shared cultural inheritance rather than grievance.

The King toured a Harlem community garden and hosted a reception that showcased British and American creative talent. These were gracious, authentic and generous demonstrations.

Into this sequence, Mamdani intruded with unwelcome presumption. Invited to the 9/11 commemoration, he used the occasion to brief reporters that he would urge the King to hand the Koh-i-Noor diamond to India.

The diamond, set in the crown of the late Queen Mother and part of the British Crown Jewels, was acquired by the East India Company in 1849 after the annexation of the Punjab and formally presented to Queen Victoria.

Its provenance has been contested for generations by several nations. That is a matter for historians and diplomats.

In the opinion of many, it is not a subject for a socialist mayor of New York to lecture a constitutional monarch on foreign soil, least of all at a ceremony honouring the victims of Islamist terror.

Mamdani’s timing was not accidental. The visit had been judged a triumph by every serious observer.

That judgment evidently irritated him. Like Khan before him, he understands that the symbolism of British and American renewal embarrasses the progressive narrative he inhabits. Both men preside over cities that continue to grapple with serious challenges of street violence and public order.

Critics argue that both appear more comfortable moralising about distant history than confronting present disorder in their own streets.

Khan’s hostility to Trump’s 2018 visit — complete with the notorious balloon and public scolding — revealed a mayor who viewed the special relationship as an embarrassment rather than an asset. Mamdani has simply updated the script.

He brings to the role the intellectual inheritance of his father, the postcolonial scholar Mahmood Mamdani, whose work consistently locates the source of African and Asian misfortune in British “indirect rule” and colonial legacies.

The son has absorbed the lesson. Where the King extends a hand of friendship across the Atlantic, Mamdani reaches for a grievance.

Where the visit celebrates the rule of law, parliamentary democracy and cultural confidence, the mayor offers a demand dressed up as a moral reckoning.

This matters because it reveals how the progressive left now governs the Anglosphere’s major cities. In the opinion of their detractors, power is exercised not primarily to keep streets safe or economies competitive but to settle historical scores on someone else’s behalf. Mamdani’s Indian heritage and his father’s Ugandan-Indian experience under Idi Amin are matters of record.

They do not, in the view of many critics, entitle him to treat the British Crown Jewels as negotiable reparations.

Brits and Americans alike have watched this episode with justified contempt. The monarchy, for all the constitutional limits placed upon it, still represents a living continuity that no elected politician can match.

The state visit has reaffirmed that continuity on the global stage. Mamdani’s intervention, by contrast, was petty, predictable and revealing. He could have used the platform to address the very real threats facing New Yorkers.

Instead, he chose to grandstand about a diamond. Khan, likewise, has faced longstanding criticism for his handling of street safety, including the legacy of grooming gang scandals.

Both men illustrate the same truth, according to their critics: when socialist mayors confront symbols of national self-confidence, they reach instinctively for the politics of resentment.

The King’s tour ends as it began — in competence and dignity. The mayors remain exactly where they were: custodians of great but troubled cities, more inclined in this instance to lecture on other people’s history than to be judged solely on their own records.

The contrast is both stark and embarrassing.