Labour’s Sadiq Khan has become the first Muslim mayor of London after defeating his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith.
With the official announcement minutes away Khan had an unassailable lead having received over a million votes and 44% of the first preference votes.
The 45-year-old MP for Tooting reclaimed City Hall for Labour after eight years of Conservative rule, and at the end of an often bitter campaign during which the Conservatives accused Khan of “pandering to extremists”.
Khan had said he would make solving London’s housing crisis a key priority, and place a freeze on public transport fares for four years.
He said he would set a target that half of all new homes should be “genuinely affordable” and promised to boost landlord licensing, as well as name and shame rogue landlords. Oxford Street would be pedestrianised and the capital’s air quality would be restored to legal and safe levels.
However, he upset many Muslims by opposing boycotts of Israel, pledging to hold a Tel Aviv festival and questioning Muslim women who wear the hijab and niqab.
The married father of two became a partner in a human rights law firm at the age of 27. He is the son of a bus driver and was brought up in a council flat. He chaired the human rights group Liberty and was elected to parliament in Tooting in 2005, becoming transport minister in the last year of Gordon Brown’s government – the first Asian and first Muslim.
Goldsmith’s campaign, overseen by the firm led by the Tory election strategist Lynton Crosby, sought to paint Khan, whose family are from Pakistan, as a supporter of “Muslim extremists.”
It sent leaflets to Hindu, Sikh and Tamil voters saying Khan was dangerous. Another letter, which warned that Labour wanted to tax gold jewellery owned by many Indian families, was also seen as stoking community tensions.
The home secretary, Theresa May, said Khan was unsafe to run London at a time when there was “a significant threat of terrorism”, because of his history of defending extremists when he was a human rights lawyer.
Boris Johnson, who repeatedly joined Goldsmith on the campaign trail, had said: “In Islam and the Labour party there is a struggle going on, and in both cases Khan – whatever his real views – is pandering to the extremists.”
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