A day ahead of the all-important announcement of its Leader, the Labour Party has announced Sadiq Khan as its candidate for the mayoral elections in London to be held in May 2016.
With 48,152 votes and a 58.9 per cent share of the votes in the fifth round after four other candidates had been eliminated, Mr. Khan won a decisive victory over Tessa Jowell who came second with 41.1 per cent of the vote. Veteran Labour leader and Member of Parliament Diane Abbott was in third place.
On his victory, Mr. Khan said he was “deeply humbled.” The MP from Tooting who has promised to make housing and transport his priority pledged to “make a real difference to Londoners lives” if elected to office.
A product of London’s multicultural transformation starting in the Seventies, Mr. Khan (44), is the son of a bus-driver and a seamstress who grew up on a south London council estate with seven siblings. His family later moved to Tooting, a constituency he has represented throughout his political career. He studied in local state school, following which he studied law in London.
Mr. Khan has had an active political career in the Labour Party. In 2008 he was appointed Minister of State for Communities by Prime Minister in Gordon Brown’s government later becoming the Minister of State for Transport.
He held the positions of Shadow Minister (London) from 2013 to 2015 and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice from 2010–2015 in Ed Miliband’s Shadow Cabinet. The major British trade union Unite endorsed Mr. Sadiq Khan’s candidature for the mayoral elections.
