He was introduced by Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, the teenager murdered in a racist attack in South East London in 1993.
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He drew strong support from labour unions and kept a distance from party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist who has an ardent base among young voters but faces heavy resistance among fellow Labour lawmakers. Growing up on a council estate before studying law and entering politics, he said he wanted to give all Londoners the opportunities the city had given him and his family. “If Donald Trump becomes the president I’ll be stopped from going there by virtue of my faith, which means I can’t engage with American mayors and swap ideas”, Khan explained.
Mr Goldsmith’s brother, Ben, added: “I am proud of my brother. It was a positive and constructive discussion about how they can work together for London and he congratulated Sadiq on his victory”, a No 10 spokesman said.
Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith also wished the new mayor “well”. A prominent figure in former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Cabinet, he resigned from the shadow Cabinet a year ago to launch his campaign to replace Boris Johnson – whose second and final term ended on Saturday.
He received a total of 1,310,143 votes – 57% of the total – compared to Zac Goldsmith’s 994,614, after the capital had its largest ever turnout at 45.6%.
In his victory speech on Friday night at City Hall, his new office, Khan described London as the “greatest city in the world” and said he had never imagined that “someone like me could be elected as mayor of London”.
Jenny, one million of London’s eight million residents are Muslim, a quarter of the city is foreign born. I hope you’re not suggesting that people’s records, the platforms they’ve shared, the policy positions they have, shouldn’t be properly scrutinised and tested and challenged during the election.
Mr Goldsmith was overwhelmingly defeated by Labour’s candidate, Sadiq Kahn, following a bitter campaign which saw his team attempt to link Mr Khan to Islamic extremists.
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There is no specific form on these type of events, but this mayoral election was Labour’s biggest success in these recent elections, so it is pretty unusual that Corbyn was not at Khan’s signing-in ceremony.
