Oxford, Bethnal Green and the Guardian: the British sojourn of a younger Abdul El-Sayed

In a Guardian article in 2010, the Oxford Rhodes scholar said UK democracy had the ‘upper hand’ over the US

In the tense final hours before his dramatic election as senator for Michigan in this week’s midterms, Abdul El-Sayed had a heated encounter with a British TV journalist that rapidly went viral.

As James Matthews, of Sky News, tried to ask him a question, El-Sayed bit back. “Why would I care to have a conversation with you?” he demanded of Matthews, placing both hands on the reporter’s shoulders in a gesture of emphasis.

“You know how many votes I want to get in the UK? Zero. I am never running for office in the UK. So I actually do not care what you think or the questions you ask.”

The clip has been viewed more than 13m times on X. But the pugnacious senator-elect has not always been so dismissive of British politics and voters. Guardian readers with longer memories may recall a young Rhodes scholar who in May 2010 wrote an article for this newspaper that declared – somewhat boldly for a future US senator – that “UK democracy has the upper hand on the US”.

He also wrote: “As an Arab-American, the likelihood of ever having the opportunity to vote for an Arab-American candidate for national office during my lifetime is minimal.” As it turned out, he was wrong about that: this week, he had the chance to vote for himself.

El-Sayed was then a 25-year-old doctoral student at Oxford University and had just attended a Labour party hustings in Bethnal Green and Bow, east London, to choose a parliamentary candidate. That meeting, he wrote, had persuaded him that the UK’s electoral system was, in some respects, superior to that of the US, leaving him “envious” of the British way of doing things.

“As an American, born, bred, and taught in school that American democracy was the greatest in the world, I was initially sceptical of this foreign brand,” he wrote. “But what I experienced that evening was a ceremony in communal self-determination that I have yet to see in any federal American electoral institution.”

El-Sayed’s election in Michigan was one of the standout headlines of Tuesday’s poll after facing a barrage of racism and Islamophobia during the campaign. Donald Trump mocked his name, called him a “jihadist lunatic” and said the Senate would have to “get a special metal detector for Abdul” if he were elected. He was also denounced at the last minute by Haley Stevens, the Democrat congresswoman he had narrowly defeated for the nomination. She sensationally endorsed his Republican rival.

El-Sayed cut a dash, too, in his campaign appearances, choosing to dress in a uniform of tight black T-shirts to show off a physique described by the BBC’s North America editor, Sarah Smith, as “jacked”.

It’s all a long way from Bethnal Green where, El-Sayed noted in his Guardian article, the smaller size of British constituencies compared with US electoral districts meant minority groups could more easily make their voices heard.