Sadiq Khan has been the Mayor of London since 2016. He has led Britain’s largest city with left-leaning policies while the rest of the country has moved to the right.
Zoran Mamdani’s New York Major Race
Mamdani, 34, will be New York City’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor.
- The mayors of London and New York are not only similar, but also different.
- Sadiq Khan and Zoran Mamdani are both sons of Muslim immigrants.
- Sadiq Khan and Zoran Mamdani have both clashed with President Donald Trump.
LONDON – His political instincts are unashamedly liberal and progressive. He is the city’s first Muslim mayor and first South Asian mayor. And he has frequently clashed with US President Donald Trump.
Democrat Zoran Mamdani won the Nov. 4 New York mayoral election with a campaign focused on cost-of-living issues such as universal child care and eliminating fares for buses and government-subsidized grocery stores.
But the next incumbent at New York City Hall, who takes office on January 1, is following in the footsteps of another mayor of a world-class metropolis with a tremendous reputation for a diverse economic, social and cultural life.
Sadiq Khan has been the Mayor of London since 2016. He has led Britain’s largest city with a left-wing policy agenda, even as other parts of the country have moved to the right on issues such as immigration, according to opinion polls.
Mamdani and Khan have some similarities in their personal and political stories.
Both are sons of Muslim immigrants. Mamdani was born in Uganda and spent his childhood there. He later grew up in New York City and became an American citizen in 2018. He is the son of a university professor and documentary maker. Mr Khan’s parents came to the UK from Pakistan. He was born and raised in Tooting, south London, where he still lives. His father was a bus driver and his mother a seamstress.
Both Mamdani and Khan are not afraid to talk about the importance of their Islamic faith.
Still, although Mr. Khan does not exactly agree with Mr. Mamdani, he congratulated Mr. Mamdani immediately after his victory and compared their respective cities and voters. “New Yorkers were faced with a clear choice between hope and fear, and as we saw in London, hope won out,” Khan said on social media.
But Mr. Khan operates in a completely different political world and context than Mr. Mamdani. Mr Khan has ruled for three terms as essentially a centrist member of the Establishment Labor Party. Mamdani entered the New York race with high hopes, with little financial or institutional support from the Democratic Party.
Mr Khan has repeatedly promised to make London’s housing and transport more affordable and environmentally clean. His critics say this is controversial, and that he has allowed crime to flourish in London. The number of crimes recorded in the capital increased by around 10% in August this year compared to the same month in 2024, according to the latest data from the Metropolitan Police.
Mamdani offered a more radical vision than Khan to address the city’s core economic and social challenges. They also come from different generations. Mr. Khan is 55 years old and Mr. Mamdani is 34 years old.
‘Hope has won’: London’s Khan congratulates Mamdani
But they reverberate in other ways.
Mamdani has been a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights, calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide and calling him more of a father figure than many Democrats. Months before the British government formally recognized a Palestinian state, Mr. Khan had called on the British government to do so. Khan also described Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.
Both have drawn the ire of President Trump.
Mr. Khan has been at odds with Mr. Trump since at least 2015, when the president called for a complete cut off of Muslim immigration to the United States, which Mr. Khan described as “outrageous.” President Trump has repeatedly criticized Khan, calling him a “heartless loser” following the London terrorist attacks. President Trump called Mamdani a “100% communist lunatic” and threatened to withdraw federal funding from New York City if Mamdani becomes mayor.
Trump and Khan clashed again in September after Trump called himself a “terrible, awful mayor” and falsely claimed he wanted to bring Sharia law to London.
Mamdani directly addressed President Trump in his victory speech. “New York is a city of immigrants, built by immigrants, run by immigrants, and tonight it will remain a city led by immigrants,” he said, adding, “If anyone can show the people betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it’s the city that produced him.”
“So it begins!” Trump wrote on his TruthSocial platform after Mamdani’s victory.
Neither Khan nor Mamdani have said much publicly about how they will work together.
But others do too.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, said the two men were part of the “red-green alliance” and were responsible for the West losing its cultural identity to “radical Islam.” Bannon also predicted that Khan could eventually become British prime minister and Mamdani as US president.
Khan was asked about Mamdani by Bloomberg TV in an interview published on October 3.
“There’s a reason why some people demonize London and New York,” he says. “Because we’re a progressive city. We’re a liberal city. We’re a multicultural city. And we’re incredibly successful.”
