In 2016, he became the first Muslim to rule a western capital. Labor mayor of London Sadiq Khan has been re-elected for a second term, according to results released on Saturday 8 May. The elected 50-year-old son of Pakistani immigrants, who grew up in social housing, beat the conservative Shaun Bailey, with Jamaican roots, in Thursday’s municipal elections. He thus obtained 55.2% of the votes in the second count against his rival. In the first count bringing together all the candidates, he had won 39.8% of the vote against 35.1% of the vote for Shaun Bailey, a gap much smaller than what the polls suggested.
The one who succeeded the current Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2016 called on Saturday evening for “a moment of national reconciliation” after Thursday’s local elections which revealed, according to him, divisions linked to “the scars of Brexit” and the “cultural war” separating the big cities from the rest of the country. He said he wanted to “build bridges between communities” over the next three years, “ensure that London plays its role in national recovery” after the pandemic and “build a brighter, greener and more equal future” for the capital.
“Jobs, jobs, jobs”
During his tenure, Sadiq Khan, a former human rights lawyer, has carved out a reputation for himself as a staunch Europhile, fierce towards Brexit and his apostle, the Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his predecessor as mayor. For his campaign, Sadiq Khan adopted as a mantra “jobs, jobs, jobs”, eager to revitalize the economy of a metropolis marked by the pandemic and Brexit, a blow to its powerful financial sector . Hoping to reiterate the success of 2012, he said he wanted to nominate the city for a “sustainable” Olympic Games in 2036 or 2040, which would stimulate the construction of environmentally friendly infrastructure.
During his first term, before the pandemic hit the capital with full force, the elected official notably froze the price of public transport and created low-emission zones to fight against automobile pollution. However, he has been criticized for failing to stem stabbing attacks, a scourge he attributes to declining police numbers resulting from austerity measures by conservative governments.
Sadiq Khan grew up in an HLM housing estate in Tooting, a popular district in south London, with his six brothers and his sister. Her father was a bus driver, her mother a seamstress. In 2005, he gave up his legal career to be elected Member of Parliament for Tooting, where he still lives with his wife and their two daughters. “I grew up in social housing, a working class boy, a child of immigrants, but I am now the mayor of London. I am a Londoner. The city is in my blood, but I am also a patriotic Englishman and a Briton proud to represent the formidable capital of the nation ”, he declared after the announcement of his victory.
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