A British socialist politician who once called American politicians getting involved in British elections “entirely unacceptable interference in our democracy” and who was eventually purged from his own party over antisemitism scandals hosted a phonebank for New York City mayoral candidate Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D).
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran British politician of the hard socialist left who was purged from Labour after a series of antisemitism scandals said he was “hosting a phone bank” to “Get Out The Vote” for Zohran Mamdani ahead of Tuesday’s New York City mayoral election. Underlining the purpose of his getting involved on behalf of the candidate, Corbyn wrote in a post: “Let’s get Zohran over the finish line for a New York that’s affordable for all!”.
Independent mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, the main opposition to Mamdani in Tuesday’s contest, pointed to Corbyn’s history of entanglement with antisemitism scandals while Labour leader. He wrote in response to the phonebank, where campaigners and volunteers telephone members of the public to encourage them to vote, said: “Having Jeremy Corbyn – someone whose party was found to have committed unlawful acts of discrimination against Jewish people under his leadership – phone-banking for [Mamdani] says everything you need to know.
“NY doesn’t need politics of moral compromise. We need leadership that rejects antisemitism, extremism, and division in every form and in every corner.”
Given strict U.S. laws again foreign interference, the campaign event also appears to have triggered the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice, with Harmeet Dhillon highlighting the activity. The appearance of British left-wing political activists in U.S. election campaigns has been a matter of contention before, with Labour politicians recorded as having campaigned for Kalama Harris in 2024, triggering questions of legality.
As reported at the time: “…under U.S. Federal Election Commission rules foreign nationals are allowed to volunteer on political campaigns but can’t be paid a salary, donate money, spend money on the campaign’s behalf, or take leadership (“decision-making”) roles. So whether these laws have been obeyed will have to be determined by the FEC”.
Legal concerns aside, there is the matter of simply hypocrisy for Mr Corbyn himself, who has thundered against American politicians getting involved in British elections in the past. Indeed, speaking of U.S. President Donald Trump speaking about the British general election in 2019 — which the Corbyn-led Labour party decisively lost — he said it was “entirely unacceptable interference in our democracy”.
Corbyn stood down from the leadership of the Labour Party after the 2019 General Election and, after his replacement Sir Keir Starmer took the top job in the 2020 party leadership election, he was purged from the party.
The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) had found in a report that there were “serious failings” in Labour’s handling of antisemitism complaints under his leadership, but Corbyn rejected the report, saying he did not accept its findings and said the notion of antisemitism on his watch was “dramatically overstated for political reasons”. This response to the report was the pretext the new Labour leadership needed to remove Corbyn from the party and ban him from running for it again.
After years as an indepoendent Member of Parliament, Corbyn is in the months-long throes of establishing a new political faction, a so-called Your Party focussed on Gaza. Yet this has been met with constant pratfalls, particularly given his strained relationship with so-leader Zarah Sultana, who seems keen to get political veteran Corbyn out of the door.
