London’s new mayor Sadiq Khan today accused David Cameron’s ruling Conservative party of using “fear and innuendo” in a bid to turn religious and ethnic groups against each other during the mayoral campaign and said the tactics were straight out of the “Donald Trump playbook”.
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His failure to bask in the glory of one of his party’s few major electoral triumphs in Thursday’s polls led to Mr Corbyn being forced to deny a rift with Mr Khan.
As Khan’s victory became clear, former Conservative Party co-chair Sayeeda Warsi tweeted about Goldsmith’s campaign, calling it “appalling” and a “dog whistle”.
“London is the greatest city in the world”.
Sadiq Khan, a Muslim and Labour Party’s politician has reportedly been elected Mayor of London on May 7.
However leader Jeremy Corbyn did not attend Khan’s swearing-in ceremony.
Khan said he had fought extremism all his life and regretted sharing a stage with speakers who held “abhorrent” views.
LONDON (AP) London’s newly elected Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, has joined an annual memorial to the millions of Jews slain in the Holocaust as his first official act in office.
He harked back to his humble beginnings – “So you better know this but I grew up in a council estate”, – and said he achieved what he never dreamt of because of the opportunities and “helping hand” the city offered him and his family.
MEGAN THOMPSON: That Conservative candidate said some things during the election that some people considered Islamophobic, even suggesting that Khan was sympathetic to Islam extremists.
The mayor – who has been dogged by claims that he is an Islamist sympathiser – took to the 1000-year-old Christian venue yesterday to declare: “We are here in Southwark Cathedral because I want to start this mayoralty as I intend to go on”.
The Labour Party’s Mr Khan is London’s first Muslim mayor, after beating Tory Zac Goldsmith by 1,310,143 votes to 994,614.
The new London Mayor used a series of media appearances over the weekend to issue a warning about the party’s direction.
The possibility of a division was further hinted at in Mr Khan’s Observer article, as he set out what he believed Labour needed to do to win in future.
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Labour fell to third place in their former heartland, losing 13 seats for a total of 24, with the Conservatives gaining 16 to secure 31 altogether. “Londoners thought they were buttering their bread by voting in an Islamic Mayor but with the butter they allowed in the cockroaches”, Mr Grima wrote on Facebook.
