Labour candidate Sadiq Khan has been elected Mayor of London, beating his Conservative opponent Zac Goldsmith.
Khan replaces Conservative’s Boris Johnson after a race characterized by allegations of extremism and racism.
The son of a bus driver from Pakistan, Khan is a former human rights lawyer who branded himself “the British Muslim who takes the fight to the extremists.”
Before the elections, he promised to be “a mayor for all Londoners,” urging voters to “choose hope over fear.”
“Now intriguingly this time — and we’ve seen a bit of it before — it appears to have brought with it some of the harder American campaign tactics,”
he said ahead of the result.
Back on the Henry Prince estate where I grew up. I’ll be the council estate boy who fixes the Tory housing crisis. pic.twitter.com/ou5Fu9iwMq
— Sadiq Khan MP (@SadiqKhan) May 5, 2016
A victory for Khan is a bright spot in what looks set to be a grim day for Labour, which has been out of office nationally since 2010.
