New Yorkers today will be waking up to the news that with almost 51 per cent of the vote, Zohran Mamdani will be their new Mayor.
Let me tell them: from someone who lives in a city that has had a socialist Mayor for almost a decade, they’re going to spend a long time fixing the damage Mamdani is going to do.
Rent caps and defunding the police may sound attractive to some New Yorkers, but the consequences are going to be felt by all of them.
But whilst Mamdani may be trying to distance himself from his “defund the police” tweets in the last few years, one comment of his has stuck with me - and one which he doesn’t seem to want to walk back: his support for US journalist Glenn Greenwald’s article in 2013 which questioned whether the cold-blooded murder of Lee Rigby was “terrorism” or just an act of war.
It’s difficult to put into words how apoplectic it makes me. Lee Rigby was murdered by Islamist terrorists in the centre of Woolwich without provocation: off duty, minding his own business, he was run down by a car whose driver and passenger then hopped out with knives and cleavers to hack him to death.
The undoubted terror he must have experienced in his final moments should chill all of us and banish all doubt as to whether or not this senseless violence was terrorism.
But not for Mamdani. “Important!” he wrote in 2013, sharing Greenwald’s article asking whether, because Rigby was a soldier, his death could not be considered an act of terrorism. Is this really the man that New York saw fit to make Mayor?
And what message does it send to British and American servicemen - serving and veteran - that the
Mayor of one of the most important cities in the US believe that the murder of soldiers at home is a legitimate act of war?
How New York's new socialist mayor responded to the murder of Lee Rigby still haunts me - Susan Hall
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I’m shocked and appalled. When Corbyn came out to support this candidate and encourage support, it should have set alarm bells off. But this is beyond the pale.
If Mamdani no longer believes what he shared a decade ago, he needs to set the record straight - and quickly. This wasn’t a teenage indiscretion or mistake: this was a comment by an adult who is now in charge of one of the wealthiest cities in America.
When the Mayor of London sends his glowing endorsements of Mamdani and congratulates him on winning the New York Mayoralty, this is who Sadiq Khan is praising.
I, for one, will not be forgetting anytime soon, and I hope that our allies in America don’t forget either. We owe it to the memory of Lee Rigby to never forget the senseless killing, nor let socialist politicians try to excuse it.
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