In a development that has London's foreign office types choking on their Earl Grey and polishing their sanctimony, candidates backed by the controversial academic Mahmood Mamdani have swept the New York primary. Yes, the very same Mamdani who once described the 9/11 attacks as a 'blowback' and has been variously labelled an apologist for every anti-Western cause from Cape Town to Kabul. His proteges, a motley crew of anti-colonial agitators and post-modern Marxists, have apparently convinced a significant chunk of the Big Apple's electorate that the path to justice lies in dismantling every institution that isn't a community garden or a reparations commission.
Let us pause, gentle reader, to appreciate the sheer absurdity. New York, the city that never sleeps, is now apparently too woke to dream. These Mamdani-ites have campaigned on a platform of 'decolonising' everything from the city's water supply to its public schools, promising to replace the NYPD with 'conflict resolution circles' and to rename every street named after a colonial figure (which, in New York, is nearly all of them). Their victory has sent ripples across the pond, where Her Majesty's most loyal opposition now fret about the stability of the 'rules-based international order'.
But let us not mince words. This is not a victory for democracy, but for a particularly pernicious form of intellectual bullying. Mamdani's ilk have long argued that Western democracy is a sham, a cover for imperial violence. Now they have the mandate to prove it, presumably by governing in a way that confirms their own critique. Expect the next few months to be a masterclass in performative radicalism, with the city council spending more time debating the correct pronouns for historical figures than fixing the subway.
The London establishment, of course, is on high alert. Not because they actually care about New Yorkers, but because if this contagion spreads to our own dear capital, we might be forced to confront the fact that our own democracy is equally malleable. Already, murmurings of 'Mamdani-ism' have been heard in the halls of the LSE and the back rooms of the Guardian. Brace yourselves, darlings. The culture war has a new front, and it's armed with tenure and a dangerously simplistic view of history.
As for me, I'll be at the airport gin bar, toasting the slow, glorious decline of reason. Cheers!
