Sir Sadiq Khan is the Labour mayor of London, elected to a third term in May 2024 with 44% of the vote and almost 1.1m votes—the largest direct mandate of any British politician.
Sir Sadiq began dating his wife, Saadiya Khan, while at school. He is a practising Muslim who speaks often of his faith and his family. He has said that if he had known the costs of becoming mayor—curtailed freedoms and death threats—he might never have run.
The mayor of London's job is not so much to run the city as to represent it. Sir Sadiq casts a fainter shadow than either of his predecessors, Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson. Jack Brown, a lecturer on London politics at King's College, says that the mayor has called for more powers from central government but has seldom forced the issue. In his first term he convened a London finance commission, which concluded that the city should be allowed to levy a tourism tax. The Treasury finally conceded in 2025, though campaigning by Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester's mayor, may have made the difference. Sir Sadiq also craves the power to control private residential rents, which he has not been given.
Sir Sadiq's greatest accomplishment is cleaning up London's air. He introduced a "toxicity charge" in 2017, levied on people who drove highly polluting vehicles into central London. In 2019 the charging area was expanded and renamed the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ). In 2023, against the wishes of senior Labour politicians who feared a backlash from motorists, he extended ULEZ to the entire city. The result is better health and fewer premature deaths among Londoners.
Donald Trump attacks Sir Sadiq in order to signal to his ethnic-nationalist supporters that an Asian Muslim man cannot be trusted with power. The mayor, who gives as good as he gets from Mr Trump, enhances his popularity among Londoners by defending the city against a president who is hugely unpopular there.
Sir Sadiq is progressive in opinion, happily leading Pride parades and castigating racism, but old-fashioned in practice. He represents London as it truly is: liberal and pious. Only 27% of people in the capital say they have no religion, compared with 39% in the rest of England and Wales. The 2021 census showed that 63% of London's children live in households headed by a married couple, higher than in any other region of the country.
Everyone's in a high place when you're on your knees.