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While the soon-to-be first Muslim mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, was in the final throes of his mayoral campaign on a brisk day in New York, Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim of mayor of London, was wrapping up a two-day climate summit in a steamy if overcast Rio de Janeiro.
“Hope is not gone,” Khan told the 300 city mayors gathered in the Brazilian city’s museum of modern art.
The London mayor was referring to the challenges faced by regional politicians in dealing with the climate emergency in the face of the scepticism or outright denial of the science by national governments – including that led by Donald Trump.
But on hearing of Mamdani’s win, Khan suggested that this too had given him hope. London and its mayor have been repeatedly raised by figures such as Trump’s former chief of staff Steve Bannon as the disastrous outcome that New Yorkers had to avoid.
“In recent years, there’s been a growing chorus of commentators and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic attacking London and New York for their liberal values,” Khan told the Guardian. “They paint a picture of a lawless dystopia in an attempt to sow fear and division. But ask most Londoners or New Yorkers, and you’ll find that this narrative falls on deaf ears.
“Many of the challenges our cities face are similar, but they are not identical. But we are united by something far more fundamental: our belief in the power of politics to change people’s lives for the better.”
He later tweeted: “New Yorkers faced a clear choice – between hope and fear – and just like we’ve seen in London – hope won.”
Khan, 55, the London-born son of Amanullah and Sehrun Khan, a bus driver and seamstress respectively, who arrived in Britain from Pakistan in 1968, achieved a historic third term as mayor on the Labour ticket in May last year.
Mamdani, the son of a Ugandan academic, Mahmood Mamdani, a specialist in colonial and post-colonial history, and Mira Nair, the acclaimed film-maker, made his own history on Tuesday as a Democrat picking up nearly 200,000 more votes in New York than his nearest rival, the former state governor Andrew Cuomo.
“It’s never been more crucial for our cities to challenge those who weaponise our diversity and instead stand firm in the belief that no matter who you are, or where your family is originally from, you can achieve anything,” said Khan. “In our cities, hope and unity will always triumph over fear and division.”
There are obvious, albeit superficial, similarities between the two men.
For all that Mamdami, 34, has been characterised as a die-hard socialist, his policy platform bears a distinct resemblance to that of Khan, who would describe himself as of the “soft left” on the British political spectrum – a flavour of progressive politics that is less enamoured of the munificence of market forces than politicians such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, but more sceptical about handing over the running of the economy to the state than the likes of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
They have both proposed types of rent controls. Mamdani wants a $30 (£23) an hour minimum wage in the city, while Khan has long supported a voluntary London living wage, which at £14.80 ($19.30) per hour is more than £2 beyond the UK’s statutory minimum.
Mamdani has proposed to impose a 2% levy on earnings above $1m year (impacting about 34,000 households), but that will involve negotiating with the New York state legislature and with Governor Kathy Hochul, who has said she opposes new income taxes. Khan does not have the powers to raise taxes, but he has sought such cash-raising powers to fund major transport projects.
Making their cities affordable has also been central to both men’s policy prospectus: Mamdani proposed free bus transit while Khan has frozen fares for years. Both men have been outspoken on Gaza, condemning Hamas’s October 7 attacks but describing Israel’s war as genocidal. Khan was ahead of his party leader, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in calling for the UK to recognise a Palestinian state.
The context though is quite different. Mamdani terrifies and excites his party in equal measure, observers say. Unlike Khan, whose 2024 campaign mantra was a “London for everyone”, the New Yorker’s rhetoric draws up dividing lines, and is seen by some as making a bogey figure of the “billionaire”.
Khan has been involved in Labour politics for over 30 years and is well-attuned to building electoral coalitions. Asked about warnings that the wealthy would leave New York if Mamdani won, he responded by inviting them to the UK.
“If that is the case, come to London,” he said. “I am going to roll out a red carpet and welcome you.”
Brett Bruen, a former US diplomat in the Obama administration, said that the major issue is that at 34 years of age, there is very little to go on when judging how Mamdani will actually govern.
He said: “He’s certainly managed to stand out as a leader made for this moment, but that comes, obviously, with quite a lot of scrutiny. Some of it, I think, is warranted in questions about his resume and whether or not he’s got like the requisite experience to lead this massive city.
“It’s fair to say that he is on the outer extremities of the political spectrum, even in New York. And you know, we have seen, in the case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and some others, that while they’ve done well in certain segments, they also become popular targets for Trump and the Republicans.
“Those of us who are more in the centre of the party, face a problematic predicament. How do we talk about a party that can appeal to independents, that can even appeal to moderate Republicans, when some of our most vocal and visible voices are those that are out so far on the left?”
If the two men differ in terms of experience, rhetoric and level of internal support within their respective parties, there are certainly parallels in the dog-whistle – and worse – politics that their candidatures provoked among their opponents.
When Khan first stood for mayor in 2016, his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith was accused of pursuing arguably the dirtiest campaign in British politics.
Tamils, Hindus and Sikhs were sent letters warning that their jewellery was unsafe, because Khan planned to introduce a wealth tax.
The Conservative then cabinet minister Michael Gove suggested that Khan would implement sharia law if elected.
The campaign culminated in an article by Goldsmith in the Mail on Sunday accompanied by a photograph of a London bus blown up during the 7/7 terror attacks and a headline suggesting that a vote for Khan would put the city into the hands of a party that “thinks terrorists are its friends”.
Trump, meanwhile, has described Khan as a “terrible, terrible mayor”, and falsely claimed that London was facing “sharia law”.
Mamdani faced similar slurs. “God forbid, another 9/11, can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?” asked Cuomo at one stage to the conservative radio talkshow host Sid Rosenberg.
“He’d be cheering,” Rosenberg replied. Cuomo, who had previously referred to Mamdani as “a terrorist sympathiser”, laughed, adding: “That’s another problem.”
“Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday.
Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Democratic governor of New Mexico, said that what united Khan and Mamdani was that they offered a positive vision of the future.
“I think that is incredibly attractive to voters,” she said. “They want new ideas. They want innovation. They want optimism. They don’t want somebody who’s dark and negative and angry.
“Mamdani is the opposite of dark, angry, moody and he’s very optimistic. So I think that’s the future of the Democratic party, identifying this enthusiasm and optimism for the future.”
Leah Kreitzman, who was Khan’s director of external and international affairs until 2021, said that there was a clear parallel between the two men that explained much of the vicious backlash they endured.
“The reason why [Sadiq] gets attacked, both by the far right and by Islamist extremists is that the very fact of him and his success means that they’re wrong,” she said.
“He completely defies their ideology and worldview: that he can be a Londoner, a Brit, a Muslim, from immigrant parents, liberal in his politics, but religious in his beliefs. If that’s if that’s all true and it’s successful and popular, they’re wrong.
[Khan and Mamdani] are quite important people in that sense, because they’re living embodiments of the fact that you can be all of those things.”
The two men, who have only spoken once after Mamdani won the Democrat ticket for the mayoral election, have clearly also recognised that there is electoral mileage in having a clear positive vision but also in being the anti-Trump candidate.
Khan told the Guardian: “What do nativist populist leaders hate? They hate liberal democracies. They hate progressives. They hate multicultural society. And in London, we have all that, and it’s really successful. So you know, having a really successful liberal, progressive, multicultural city led by a mayor elected not once, not twice, three times who’s of Islamic faith and Pakistani origin must be a real sore to him, a running sore, but that’s his problem not mine.”
On winning in New York, Mamdani, with typical swagger addressed the US president: “Donald Trump, since I know you‘re watching, I have four words for you – turn the volume up.”
