If Mr Khan is to appeal to swing voters, he will have to broaden his appeal.
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His nomination is certain to be overshadowed by Saturday’s announcement of a new leader, with polls and bookies both pointing to victory for left-winger Jeremy Corbyn.
“Wow, thank you! I’m overwhelmed”. It’s people who aren’t even politicians.
“That’s been my campaign, how I’ve done my politics throughout”.
“At each stage we’ve made sure we understand the rules of the game and win the selection”.
“It’s this that will underpin our campaign to win back City Hall”.
In June Mr Khan co-sponsored an early day motion in Parliament praising the efforts of campaigners to ban the a neo-Nazi protest planned for the heart of the north-west London Jewish community.
“Sometimes that may mean there being tension between me and the Labour leadership”.
“City Hall might have been a few stops up on the Northern Line, but to a young Londoner like me it seemed a million miles away”.
“Sometimes that may mean there being tension between me and the Labour leadership. Other times we will be on the same side”. A total of 87,954 votes were cast.
Head of political betting at Ladbrokes Matthew Shaddick said: “Tessa Jowell would have been a strong favourite had she got the nod, but Khan’s victory makes this race nearly too close to call”.
He also won the backing of 16 London Labour MPs, as well as senior figures from across the party including Ken Livingstone and Neil Kinnock.
May’s mayoral contest will be of major national significance – as the first real test of Labour under its new leader, expected to be named tomorrow as Mr Corbyn.
All of Labour’s members, affiliated supporters and registered supporters in London were entitled to take part in the vote to choose the party’s candidate for the 2016 mayoral race. “It also points pretty clearly to a Corbyn coronation”.
For some, Tony Blair and the Iraq war will have been a factor too.
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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.
