New york

The radicals are now in charge of NYC. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has unveiled his transition team and voters who agreed with his diagnosis that “everything is too expensive” will now have to live with the anti-police activists, anti-merit educrats and anti-Zionist radicals running the show. The moderate center is in for a shock.Take Alex Vitale, Mamdani’s “safety advisor” and author of The End of Policing, who seeks to abolish police departments, viewing them as “a tool of white supremacy.” Vitale will collaborate with convicted armed robber Mysonne Linen on Mamdani’s public safety plan. They support Mamdani’s plan to replace the NYPD with a “Department of Community Safety” for a range of police calls.

In the final weeks of the New York City mayoral campaign, there was heavy involvement from billionaires and masters of the universe. Donald Trump and Elon Musk joined the chorus of the Democratic Establishment. And the message was clear: a vote for me was a vote for Mamdani. There was a 72-hour barrage from super PACs running this message on conservative radio and news shows in an attempt to convince Republicans and conservatives to abandon their beliefs and principles and effectively join the Democratic party. No longer was the focus on what each candidate stood for. The point was to rewrite history and distance fact from reality. We had Andrew Cuomo – a failed governor who left office in disgrace – being presented to the public as NYC’s only savior.

There is an unhappy history of left-wing Britons getting involved in US elections. Back in 2004, the Guardian – the flagship organ of the British left – organized a letter-writing campaign, urging voters in the swing state of Ohio not to re-elect George W. Bush. The good people of Ohio didn’t take kindly to a bunch of North Londoners telling them how to vote, and although the Guardian’s campaign probably can’t be given all the credit, the voters of Ohio duly went to the polls and swung firmly behind Bush. One wishes that London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s intervention in this week’s election in New York might have had a similar result.

Zohran Mamdani is the mayor-elect of New York City, and the progressive wing of the  Democratic party is Champagne drunk celebrating his ascension.  But should it be? Mamdani has only narrowly prevailed in a race with a clear spoiler candidate, Republican Curtis Sliwa, lead-blocking for him against a charmless opponent, former governor Andrew Cuomo. With tougher, more honorable competition, it’s possible – likely, even – that he may not have even made it to the general election, much less won it. Only when compared to a corrupt, sleazy, nepobaby with blood on his hands, and a beret-clad, narcissistic cat-man whose own friends begged him to step aside, did voters view Mamdani as a much-needed alternative.

Is Maud Maron crazy? Bill Ackman certainly thought the Republican candidate for Manhattan DA was, she tells me, when she asked him for $2 million. While the billionaire hedge fund CEO said he could easily raise the money she needed to fund her campaign in a single night, ultimately he chose not to – and instead focused on backing Andrew Cuomo for mayor.Ackman thought “oh, she's a nice lady, but she's crazy,” Maron recalls. “She's running as a Republican in a Democratic city.”Fast forward six months and Cuomo is on the brink of losing to Zohran Mamdani – and Ackman has cast a vote for Maron, who he now calls “great.

Of all the people to go as for Halloween, why would you choose Bill de Blasio, an undistinguished Mayor of New York and flame-out 2020 presidential candidate?  That’s a plausible explanation for the recent howler from the Times of London – Great Britain’s newspaper of record – whose veteran US correspondent Bevan Hurley quoted a man identifying himself as de Blasio on his misgivings about Zohran Mamdani. “While the ambition is admirable, the cost estimates – reportedly exceeding $7 billion annually – rest on optimistic assumptions... about eliminating waste and raising revenue through new taxes,” this total imposter told Mr. Hurley, with strange eloquence. “In my view, the math doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, and the political hurdles are substantial.