The new mayor of London

Sadiq Khan is the son of a man who left Pakistan to make a better life

For the last eight years, London has had the charismatic Boris Johnson as mayor. The man elected to replace him is anything but charismatic — but he is Muslim and therein lies the birth of a thousand headlines around the world. Sadiq Khan is son of a man who left Pakistan to make a better life. He became a London bus driver and the rest, as they say, is history. The new mayor was elected after a bitter and rancorous battle, with a patrician Conservative on one side, a working-class-made-good Labour man on the other. Sadiq Khan won by a substantial margin, and it will not only have been the Muslim population that voted for him. Indeed, there are elements of that population that would not have supported his candidacy as he has openly supported a range of liberal issues that would be anathema to them — as well as anathema to a sizeable proportion of the people of Pakistan.

Inevitably, comparisons are being made between London and Islamabad but they are largely pointless. Sadiq Khan has a long and honourable record of public and political service, there is not even the faintest whiff of corruption about him though he has made some unwise choices in the past as to who he was photographed with and he won the job fair and square via an un-rigged poll. How unlike a Pakistani politician is that? He now has the job of making good on his campaign promises, many of them ambitious. He also will be under the closest scrutiny as to how he handles issues of race and gender, immigration and equality and the role of women everywhere, be it in public or private life. There will be no hiding place for Mayor Khan. Who he stands next to in a photo-op will have to be carefully considered and off-the-cuff remarks avoided. There will be an enemy around every corner. We congratulate Mayor Khan and wish him well for the years to come. ‘Watch this space’ was never more apt.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 8^th, 2016.

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