Sayeeda Warsi, the former Tory Foreign Office minister, has expressed exasperation at Zac Goldsmith’s increasingly strident tone as he seeks to make up ground before Thursday’s vote for London mayor.
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Corbyn said during the House of Commons exchange: “I would like to invite him to think for a moment about the conduct of his party and his candidate in the London Mayoral elections, the way in which they’re systematically smearing my friend”. Khan, 45, is lampooned for how often he repeats his “son of a bus driver” refrain and grew up in social housing with Pakistani immigrant parents, where he slept at home while studying law in order to save for a house.
“The campaign has degenerated in a profoundly depressing way”, London reporter and blogger for The Guardian, Dave Hill, told NBC News.
However, most important to their supporters was cleaning up London’s air – and the lead candiates have failed to impress with their current proposals.
There was fresh controversy Wednesday when footage emerged of a 2009 interview in which Khan said government attempts to engage the Muslim community could not just focus on “Uncle Toms”.
“They need to understand what anti-Semitism is”.
Reviving previous comments by Mr Corbyn referring to the Palestinian Hamas movement and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia as “friends”, Mr Cameron said Labour was a “party that puts extremists over working people”.
Sadiq Khan, the favourite to become mayor, is squarely centre-left.
Goldsmith, 41, an environmentalist and Conservative lawmaker, is the son of late tycoon financier James Goldsmith.
Labour candidate Sadiq Khan looked set to become the first Muslim to be elected mayor of London on Thursday, loosening the Conservatives’ hold on the capital after a campaign marred by charges of anti-Semitism and extremism. “The mandate of a city as big as London gives the mayor a voice and authority which goes well beyond that formal mandate”.
A survey by market research firm YouGov for the London Evening Standard published Thursday put Khan ahead of Goldsmith by 43% to 32% as a first preference for voters.
“It’s crucial [for the European Union campaign] that Goldsmith won’t be winning”, said Charles Lichfield, an European Union analyst for risk consultancy Eurasia, saying Khan’s win is “certainly not something that the pro-Brexiters could use”.
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Corbyn predicted last week that Labour would not lose seats, but later said that “predictions are not that important”. His policies on NHS, jobs, housing and transport are much needed and appreciated by the majority of Londoners. Khan has also tried to distance himself from the unpopular Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who he had in fact nominated to widen the field of candidates.
