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In his victory speech, Khan promises to “build bridges” and create jobs as the UK capital emerges from the pandemic.
Sadiq Khan has been re-elected mayor of London, in a tighter race than expected, and has given a boost to the opposition Labor party after disappointing local elections on Thursday.
Khan was the first Muslim to lead a major Western capital after winning in 2016, gaining 55.2% of the vote compared to 44.8 percent of the Conservative Party’s ruling party candidate Shaun Bailey.
Turnout was 42 percent, lower than in the previous 2016 election.
“I am very humbled by the confidence that London has placed in me to continue to drive the largest city on earth,” Khan said, and has focused his campaign on creating nine million city jobs.
He said his 50-year term was to “build bridges between different communities” and will focus on the town hall and the government.
He said he wanted “London to be able to play its role in national recovery” and “build a greener and greener and more equal future” for the UK capital.
Khan has taken his name as a critic of Brexit and successive Conservative prime ministers, Boris Johnson, as his predecessor as mayor, as well as his clash with former US President Donald Trump.
The two men were embroiled in an extraordinary war of words after Khan criticized Trump’s controversial travel ban on people in certain Muslim countries.
Khan’s re-election comes as one of the many sets of results for Labor in the local elections in the former heart of central and northern England, and the result in the 2019 national vote was disastrous.
Although Johnson was very successful in other parts of England, the opposition party is growing in London.
Analysts have attributed this to the city’s younger, more ethnically diverse and pro-European population, unlike most in England, mainly against Brexit.
In his victory speech, Khan mentioned his humble origins as he grew up in public housing in an ethnically mixed residential area of south London.
“I grew up in a council property, a working class boy, an immigrant child, but now I’m the mayor of London,” he said, calling himself a “Londoner”.
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