Winning
London ‘street to street, synagogue to mosque’
Labour’s
Sadiq Khan is likely to be the new mayor of London, despite Tory
attempts to make his religion an issue.
By TOM MCTAGUE
5/3/16, 5:30 AM CET
LONDON — Europe’s
biggest city is about to elect a mayor who may be banned from
entering the United States if Donald Trump is elected president.
Labour’s Sadiq
Khan, a practicing Muslim whose parents moved to Britain from
Pakistan, is on course to crush his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith
in Thursday’s vote, with a double-digit lead in opinion polls.
His rise comes
despite a campaign orchestrated by Tory HQ — with the help of PR
firm co-owned by Prime Minister David Cameron’s Australian election
guru Lynton Crosby — to paint him as an extremist. Khan has also
had to contend with a storm of controversy over allegations of
anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
The former London
mayor Ken Livingstone sparked outrage after defending a Muslim Labour
MP who had called for Israelis to be transported to the United
States. Labour left-winger Livingstone also claimed Hitler was a
Zionist.
In his bid for a job
that would make him Europe’s most powerful Muslim politician,
45-year-old Khan was already battling against a rise in Islamophobia
since the Paris and Brussels attacks, which revived memories of the
2005 London bombings. He knows the anti-Semitism row could hurt his
chances of winning over a city with 170,000 Jewish voters.
‘Where
else do you get a politician of Islamic faith opening his fast in
Jewish synagogues?’ — Sadiq Khan
But London is not
the same as the U.K. nor Europe. One of the world’s most diverse
cities, more than 40 percent of its population is from an ethnic
minority, compared to 16 percent in the U.K. as a whole.
Khan urges his
campaign volunteers to go “street to street, from synagogue to
mosque, church to gurdwara.” Outside London they’d be walking a
long time to get from the village church to the local gurdwara.
A practising Muslim
who prays five times a day and fasts for Ramadan, Khan is every bit
the Londoner, born and brought up on a low-income housing estate in
south London by a stay-at-home mother and bus-driver father. Also
very much the metropolitan liberal, he says he’s proud to win votes
from “Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs” as
well as those “who aren’t members of organised religion — gay,
lesbian, black, white, rich, poor, old, young.”
“London is a
beacon for the rest of the world,” he told POLITICO. “Where else
do you get a politician of Islamic faith opening his fast in Jewish
synagogues? That’s the London that I know. We don’t tolerate
difference, we respect it and celebrate it. That’s the London story
— why would you want to divide that and cause problems?”
Londonistan
Khan is alluding to
his rival Zac Goldsmith, whose campaign has been accused of adopting
“dog-whistle tactics” by focusing heavily on Khan’s
associations with extremists.
David Cameron
attacked Khan during Prime Minister’s Questions for repeatedly
sharing a platform with the preacher Suliman Gani, who has called for
an Islamic state and labeled women “subservient.”
It was such people,
alongside the tabloid hate figures Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza — both
now extradited from the U.K. — who epitomised “Londonistan,”
Europe’s center of Islamist fanaticism before that unwanted mantle
passed to Paris and Brussels.
Labour believes the
Tory campaign has been heavily influenced by Crosby, who is known for
using immigration as a dividing issue. The Tories insist Crosby has
nothing to do with the contest campaign, but his business partner
Mark Fullbrook has been seen campaigning with Goldsmith.
‘The
Labour Party has a really serious problem with anti-Semitism’ —
Zac Goldsmith
The Conservative
candidate, son of billionaire financier Sir James Goldsmith, told
POLITICO it was “completely irresponsible” of Labour to accuse
his campaign of racism.
“There is a
growing concern around security, not surprisingly because of what has
been happening in Europe — Brussels, Paris and so on,” he said.
This is not about Khan, said Goldsmith, but “how are you going to
keep London safe.”
“You can’t stand
for mayor of London — the greatest city in the world, the most
important city in the world, a job with a big security remit — and
not expect your extensive links to people who wish to do this city
harm to come under scrutiny,” he said.
“People understand
— I’m not questioning Sadiq Khan’s world view or his priorities
— but I am questioning his judgement. Judgement matters for
somebody who wants to be mayor of London,” said Goldsmith,
broadening his argument to the current allegations of anti-Semitism
in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, who has voiced support for
Hamas and Hezbollah.
“The Labour Party
has a really serious problem with anti-Semitism and it runs right the
way through the party,” said Goldsmith, who is father was Jewish
and who has reported receiving anti-Semitic abuse on Twitter.
But Chuka Umunna,
the Labour MP for Streatham, south London, whose late father was
Nigerian, accused the Tories of trying to “segment up the ethnic
minority vote” by targeting Hindu, Sikh and Jewish voters.
He said the Tories
had made a calculated decision that they could “afford to offend”
Muslims because they voted Labour.
“I’ve spoken to
current and former senior Conservative ministers who abhor the
campaign they are running against Sadiq. There are quite ashamed of
the campaign that they are running — it’s really base politics of
the worst kind.”
‘I love America’
Christopher Curtis
from the pollsters YouGov, however, said there was “no evidence”
that a large number of people were concerned by Khan’s religion or
race — or , indeed, that people knew who the candidates were or
would vote on anything other than party lines. “This is a massively
Labour city. If it’s Labour versus the Tories then Labour wins,”
he said.
This is someone who
is going to be the most senior Muslim politician in Europe’ —
Chuka Umunna, MP
Khan has a 16-point
lead for the first round, rising to 20 points in the second, meaning
Goldsmith “has a massive mountain to climb to win this election,”
said Curtis. Compared to the 2012 vote when the Tories’ Boris
Johnson beat Labour left-winger Ken Livingstone, this time round “the
Conservative candidate is not as good and the Labour candidate is
better,” said the pollster.
Umunna said it was
“remarkable” to see how little people cared about race or
religion in a contest that was “on the cusp of electing the first
Muslim mayor of a major European city.”
“This is someone
who is going to be the most senior Muslim politician in Europe, let
alone Britain. It is a tribute to London — Londoners are more
interested in what this extremely talented man has to say on the
issues,” said the MP.
Sadiq-Khan2
London mayoral
candidate Sadiq Khan’s supporters at a gathering in April, 2016 |
Photo by Alexander McBride Wilson for POLITICO
The issues that have
dominated the campaign are housing and transport, he said, rather
than “that Sadiq is a Muslim.” Umunna said that would not have
been the case 15 or 20 years ago when he was growing up, and was a
sign that Londoners are “more diverse and more comfortable in our
skin.”
Khan’s religion
could become an issue, however, if Trump become president of the
United States and introduces his “complete shutdown” on Muslims
entering the United States.
“I’m hoping he
doesn’t win. I’ve got family in America who are Muslim — I love
America,” Khan told POLITICO.
“I visit there
frequently — it’s a great country. But as the mayor of London I
could be stopped from going there to meet Bill de Blasio, Rahm
Emanuel or other Americans because of my faith. That’s not the
America I know and love.”
In January, the
front-runner for the Republican nomination stirred further
controversy in the U.K. by claiming there were “places in London
and other places that are so radicalized that the police are afraid
for their own lives.”
Despite Trump’s
call for Muslims to be banned from the U.S., Khan does not want the
ban reciprocated.
“It would be good
for Donald Trump to come to London — but also parts of America —
and meet people who are comfortable being American and Muslim and
British and Muslim,” he said.
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