Sadiq Khan
Based on Wikipedia: Sadiq Khan
A bus driver's son who grew up in a council flat in South London became the most powerful Muslim politician in Western Europe. Sadiq Khan's journey from a cramped three-bedroom apartment shared with nine family members to the Mayor's office at City Hall tells us something essential about modern Britain—both its possibilities and its persistent tensions.
The Earlsfield Kid
Khan was born in October 1970 at St George's Hospital in Tooting, the fifth of eight children. His father Amanullah had arrived from Pakistan just two years earlier, part of a generation of immigrants who came to Britain seeking opportunity in the postwar labor shortage. His mother Sehrun came with him. The family's migration story actually began a generation earlier, during one of the twentieth century's greatest human upheavals.
Khan's grandparents were Muhajirs—a term meaning "migrants" in Arabic, used specifically for the millions of Muslims who fled India for the newly created Pakistan during the 1947 partition. They had left Lucknow, a city in what was then the United Provinces of British India, and resettled in Karachi. The partition of India killed somewhere between one and two million people and displaced roughly fourteen million more. It remains one of history's largest mass migrations.
So when Amanullah and Sehrun Khan arrived in London, they were continuing a family pattern of movement and reinvention. Amanullah found work driving buses for London Transport. Sehrun worked as a seamstress. They raised their eight children—seven boys and one girl—in that council flat on the Henry Prince Estate in Earlsfield, an area wedged between Wandsworth Common and Wimbledon.
The family was working class in the most literal sense. Khan remembers being "surrounded by my mum and dad working all the time," and as soon as he was old enough, he joined them. Paper rounds. Saturday jobs. Summer work laboring on building sites. The family still sends money back to relatives in Pakistan, a common practice among immigrant communities that economists call remittances—billions of pounds flow out of Britain every year to support extended families abroad.
Boxing Lessons
The Khans faced regular racism. This was 1970s and 1980s Britain, a country still deeply uncomfortable with its transformation into a multiracial society. The National Front was marching through cities. "Paki-bashing" was common enough to have its own slang term. Khan and his brothers learned to fight at the Earlsfield Amateur Boxing Club, a practical response to a practical problem.
This detail matters because it reveals something about Khan's political character that would emerge later. He didn't grow up in a sheltered environment where conflicts were resolved through polite discussion. He grew up knowing that sometimes you have to be willing to scrap.
Khan attended local state schools—Fircroft Primary School, then Ernest Bevin School, a comprehensive. He was studying science and mathematics, aiming to become a dentist, when a teacher noticed something. Khan was argumentative. Instead of seeing this as a problem, the teacher suggested he channel it into law.
The recommendation aligned with another influence: the American television drama L.A. Law, which ran from 1986 to 1994 and glamorized the legal profession for a generation of viewers on both sides of the Atlantic. Khan enrolled at the University of North London—now London Metropolitan University—to study law. While pursuing his degree, he worked Saturdays at the Peter Jones department store in Sloane Square, one of London's most upmarket shopping destinations. The irony of a council estate kid selling goods to Chelsea's wealthy residents wasn't lost on anyone.
Human Rights Lawyer
After completing his law degree in 1991, Khan trained at Christian Fisher, a firm that specialized in legal aid cases—representing people who couldn't afford lawyers. Legal aid in Britain works differently from the American system. The government pays private solicitors to represent defendants and claimants who qualify based on their income and the merits of their case. It's chronically underfunded and the lawyers who do this work earn far less than their corporate counterparts.
Khan became a partner at the firm in 1997, specializing in human rights law. His caseload reads like a catalog of civil liberties controversies. He represented a doctor alleging racial discrimination in National Health Service hiring. He took on cases against the Metropolitan Police for discrimination and wrongful use of force. He represented protesters arrested during May Day demonstrations, arguing their rights under the Human Rights Act had been violated.
Two cases stand out for their political significance.
In 2001, Khan represented Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam in America. Farrakhan is a deeply controversial figure, accused of antisemitism and inflammatory rhetoric, who had been banned from entering Britain since 1986. Khan successfully overturned that ban in the High Court, though the government won on appeal and Farrakhan remained excluded. Representing Farrakhan was legally defensible—everyone deserves representation—but politically risky. It would be used against Khan for years.
The other notable case involved Maajid Nawaz, Reza Pankhurst, and Ian Nisbet, three British men arrested in Egypt on charges of trying to revive Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist organization that seeks to establish a global caliphate. Khan traveled to Egypt to represent them. Nawaz has since become a prominent liberal Muslim voice and critic of Islamist extremism—one of those rare cases where someone moves from radicalism to reform.
Into Politics
Khan had been involved in Labour Party politics since his twenties, serving as a councillor in Wandsworth from 1994 to 2006. In 2003, the local Labour party in Tooting opened up their parliamentary selection, prompting the sitting MP Tom Cox—who had held the seat since 1974—to retire rather than face a competitive process. Khan won the selection and then the 2005 general election.
He arrived in Parliament during Tony Blair's controversial final years. Blair had won three consecutive elections, transforming Labour from a party of permanent opposition into a natural party of government. But the 2003 invasion of Iraq had fractured the party and alienated millions of voters. Khan was among the skeptics.
His first major parliamentary battle earned him an unlikely honor. Blair wanted to introduce ninety-day detention without charge for terrorism suspects—an extraordinary power that would allow the police to hold someone for three months without presenting evidence to a court. Khan helped lead the successful opposition. The Spectator, a right-wing magazine then edited by a certain Boris Johnson, named Khan their "Newcomer of the Year" for 2005, praising his "tough-mindedness and clarity" on "the very difficult issues of Islamic terror."
This is worth pausing on. A Muslim MP opposing extended detention for terrorism suspects, praised by a conservative magazine edited by a man who would later become his chief political rival. Politics in the mid-2000s operated by different rules than today.
The Letter
In August 2006, British police arrested seven men for plotting to blow up transatlantic flights using liquid explosives hidden in drink bottles. This plot, if successful, would have killed thousands and dwarfed the 7/7 bombings of the previous year. Two days after the arrests, Khan signed an open letter to Tony Blair published in The Guardian.
The letter, signed by prominent British Muslims, argued that Blair's foreign policy—particularly the Iraq War—was providing "ammunition to extremists who threaten us all." The timing was incendiary. John Reid, the Home Secretary who had coordinated the arrests, called the letter "a dreadful misjudgement." Michael Howard, the former Conservative leader, called it "a form of blackmail."
Was it? The letter didn't justify terrorism. It argued that bad policy was making terrorism more likely—a position held by many security experts, including some within the intelligence services. But publishing it forty-eight hours after a mass-casualty plot was foiled made it look like a threat: change your policy or expect more plots.
Khan has never really escaped this controversy. For his supporters, he was speaking an unpopular truth. For his critics, he was at best naive about how the letter would be received, at worst providing political cover for extremism.
Gordon Brown's Protégé
When Gordon Brown replaced Blair as Prime Minister in 2007, Khan's career accelerated. Brown made him a party whip, responsible for ensuring Labour MPs voted the right way. This led to another controversy: in 2008, Khan helped push through legislation allowing forty-two-day detention without charge—a position that seemed to contradict his earlier opposition to ninety-day detention.
Shami Chakrabarti, then director of Liberty, the civil liberties organization Khan had once chaired, accused him of abandoning his principles. Khan's defenders argued that forty-two days was a meaningful compromise from ninety. His critics saw opportunism—a man willing to shift his positions for career advancement.
Brown promoted Khan to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in October 2008, then to Minister of State for Transport in June 2009. At Transport, Khan became, technically, the first Muslim to attend British Cabinet meetings—though as a junior minister, he only attended for items covering his policy area.
He announced his own promotion on Twitter, believed to be the first MP to do so. It was 2009. Social media was still new enough that this counted as noteworthy.
The Expenses Complications
Khan's parliamentary career was shadowed by expenses issues, though none rose to the level of the spectacular scandals that ended other MPs' careers during the 2009 expenses crisis. In 2007, he repaid five hundred pounds for a newsletter that featured an "unduly prominent" Labour rose logo. In 2010, he repaid money for Christmas, Eid, and birthday cards sent to constituents—something that violated rules about using parliamentary resources for personal communications. He also repaid money for letters that were deemed to have the "unintentional effect of promoting his return to office."
These were minor infractions compared to colleagues who had claimed for duck houses and moat cleaning. But they established a pattern that critics would reference: rules seemingly bent, explanations offered, money repaid when caught.
The Bugging Incident
More serious was the revelation in February 2008 that Khan's conversation with a constituent had been recorded by police. The constituent was Babar Ahmad, a British man accused of involvement in terrorism, and Khan had visited him in Woodhill Prison. The Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch had bugged the conversation.
This touched on a fundamental principle of parliamentary democracy. The Wilson Doctrine, named after 1960s Prime Minister Harold Wilson, held that the security services should not bug Members of Parliament. The doctrine protected MPs' ability to communicate freely with constituents, including those accused of crimes.
An inquiry concluded that technically, the Wilson Doctrine didn't apply because the bugging was authorized by a senior police officer rather than the Home Secretary. This was a distinction without a meaningful difference—the conversation was still recorded. The Home Secretary subsequently announced that bugging discussions between MPs and constituents should be banned.
For Khan, the incident was both a violation of his rights and a political problem. Having your conversations with a terrorism suspect recorded doesn't look great, even if the recording was improper.
Mayor of London
After Labour lost the 2010 election, Khan served in the shadow cabinet under Ed Miliband, whom he had managed to victory in the Labour leadership contest. He became Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Justice Secretary, then added Shadow Minister for London. In 2016, he ran for Mayor.
His opponent was Zac Goldsmith, the wealthy Conservative MP for Richmond Park. The campaign became notorious for its tone. Goldsmith's team repeatedly linked Khan to extremism, highlighting his past legal representation of controversial clients and the 2006 letter. Critics called the campaign Islamophobic. Goldsmith denied this, arguing that he was raising legitimate questions about Khan's judgment and associations.
Khan won decisively, becoming the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital. The symbolism was obvious: the bus driver's son from a council flat, raised in a city where he'd faced regular racism, now running that city.
Running London
The Mayor of London has real but limited powers. Transport for London—the buses, the Underground, the Overground, the trams, the river services—falls under mayoral control. So does the Metropolitan Police, though the relationship is more supervisory than operational. The mayor sets strategic direction for planning, housing, and economic development but works through the boroughs for actual implementation.
Khan's signature transport initiative was the Hopper fare, allowing unlimited bus and tram journeys within an hour of first tapping in. This helped lower-income Londoners who often need multiple buses to reach work or school. He expanded the London congestion charge—the fee for driving into central London during working hours—both in cost and geographic coverage.
His most controversial transport policy was the Ultra Low Emission Zone, or ULEZ. This charges older, more polluting vehicles for entering first central London, then inner London, and eventually Greater London. The policy genuinely improved air quality—pollution levels dropped measurably. But it also imposed costs on drivers who couldn't afford newer vehicles, and became a political flashpoint, with accusations that Khan was waging war on motorists.
On aviation, Khan supported expansion at Gatwick and London City Airport while opposing a third runway at Heathrow—a position that balanced environmental concerns against economic development. Heathrow expansion remains perpetually stalled.
Brexit and the Pandemic
Khan was a vocal supporter of Britain remaining in the European Union, backing both the initial 2016 Remain campaign and the subsequent People's Vote campaign for a second referendum. Neither succeeded. Brexit passed, was implemented, and Khan was left as the mayor of a global city suddenly outside the European economic framework.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented different challenges. Transport for London's finances collapsed as ridership vanished. The government provided a 1.6 billion pound bailout but demanded fare increases and efficiency savings in return. Khan implemented the fare rises while lobbying for stronger public health restrictions during the pandemic—sometimes finding himself to the left of the national government on lockdowns and mask mandates.
Crime and Criticism
Khan's tenure has coincided with rising knife and gun crime in London. Whether this is his fault is genuinely debatable. Policing is operationally independent—the mayor sets priorities but doesn't direct officers. Austerity cuts to youth services, mental health provision, and police numbers began before Khan took office and continued under central government control. Similar crime increases occurred in other British cities with different political leadership.
Still, Khan accepted the mayoralty promising to address violent crime. The problem has worsened on his watch. His critics hold him responsible. His defenders point to factors beyond his control. Both positions contain truth.
Three Terms
Khan won reelection in 2021 and again in 2024, becoming the first and only London mayor to serve three terms. He's been knighted, making him Sir Sadiq Khan—another first for a sitting mayor.
His political positioning is what's called "soft left" in Labour terms: socially liberal, moderately redistributive, comfortable with capitalism but supportive of regulation and public services. He's a social democrat in the European sense—someone who believes in a market economy with a strong welfare state and robust civil liberties.
The relationship with his predecessor Boris Johnson—first as mayor, then as Prime Minister—was consistently hostile. They represent genuinely different visions of London and of Britain. Johnson's London was a global financial center, freewheeling and business-friendly. Khan's London emphasizes diversity, sustainability, and social equity. Neither vision is entirely wrong. Neither is entirely right.
What He Represents
Sadiq Khan's career embodies a specific British story: the immigrant family that works its way up through education, professional achievement, and eventually political power. It's a story the country tells about itself during optimistic moments.
But Khan also embodies the tensions in that story. The boxing lessons to survive racism. The surveillance by security services. The campaigns that questioned whether he truly belonged. The persistent critique that his associations make him unsuitable for office.
He's currently the most prominent Muslim politician in the Western world, leading one of its most important cities. Whether that makes him a symbol of integration's success or a lightning rod for integration's conflicts depends largely on who you ask. Probably both are true simultaneously.
The bus driver's son runs London's buses now. And everything else the mayor controls. What you make of that depends on what you think Britain is becoming.