The selfies begin on the early-morning Eurostar, where Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, sits with three close aides in standard class. Couples approach him, individuals too, then a small group of giggling young women, one wearing a headscarf. “We really admire what you’re doing,” she tells him excitedly.
As the train plunges beneath the Channel and crosses into France and then Belgium, Khan is always good-natured, always professional, always says yes to a photo. By the time we get to Brussels, even the three train conductors are posing for a picture with the mayor.
Arguably the U.K. Labour party’s most successful politician since Tony Blair, Khan has achieved an international box-office status to which few other British politicians can aspire. His achievements in London are debatable, yet a combination of his religion and an ability to make the most of the high-profile nature of his job have made him a global star.
That puts him in a nearly unique position in British politics. Could Khan, like Boris Johnson before him, use the mayoralty as a launchpad for the top job in British politics?
The mayor insists he has no ambitions beyond City Hall. “The track record of mayors of London going on to be good prime ministers is not a good one,” he jokes, before allowing himself a caveat. “But [Boris Johnson] was a bad mayor,” he says. “Maybe good mayors can do it?”
“On some level he has come to symbolize London’s sense of itself.That’s a very powerful position to be in.” — Former shadow Cabinet colleague
Winning another term in May looks like easy bit. As he campaigns across the city, the bookies make him the overwhelming favorite to win.
The only public polling so far, carried out in November, put Khan 22 points clear of his Conservative rival, Shaun Bailey. Rory Stewart, the maverick ex-Tory MP running as an independent, was a distant third. While there’s still time for an upset, London is a Labour city these days and has yet to elect a single-term mayor. “It’s looking extremely challenging for us,” an aide close to Bailey’s campaign admits.
The next steps will be more difficult, but they are by no means inconceivable.
The future for Labour could hardly look less rosy. The party is looking for a new leader to rebuild both support and morale following a thumping defeat in the U.K.’s national election in December. Khan this week threw his weight behind Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary and clear front-runner.
But plenty of insiders already look at the Conservative’s commanding 80-seat majority in parliament — huge by historic standards — and fear it will be impossible to overturn at the next election, scheduled for 2024.
Khan has used the position to secure a global profile unmatched by almost any civic leader on the planet.
As that date approaches, there will be no lack of Labour luminaries looking to ensure the party has a leader with enough star power to carry the party back to Downing Street.
For Khan, that date is also highly significant. It’s when his second four-year term as mayor may well draw to a close. Assuming he wins in May, there will be plenty in his party who will be hoping Khan is ready to make a play for the country’s top job.
‘Chasing headlines’
For all the runaway poll ratings, Khan’s domestic record is mixed at best.
Violent crime in London has soared under his watch, and he’s made few inroads into the capital’s long-standing housing crisis. Between 2016 and 2018 London saw an average of 35,500 houses built each year, a rise on the 25,500 yearly average between 2012 and 2016, but still well below Khan’s long-term target.
Transport for London has serious financial problems and the new £18 billion train line Crossrail — Europe’s largest construction project — is over budget and three years behind schedule.
As Julian Glover, associate editor of London’s Evening Standard puts it: “He has looked the part and made a lot of people proud that he is mayor, but not very much has happened. On transport he has neglected the Crossrail project, which he should have realized much sooner than he did was running late and wasn’t managed correctly.”
Some business leaders raise concerns about the mayor’s supposed lack of engagement, with quarterly meetings left to a deputy to run.
Khan argues a four-year term is too short a time to talk about real legacy. Already he has a story to tell on improving air quality. He can cite transport innovations such as transferable bus fares and the all-night Tube, reel off stats which he claims show the picture on crime is improving, and can blame national government cuts to the police.
Sadiq Khan poses for a selfie with Londoners outside the Brixton Underground station to mark the beginning of 24-hour service in 2016 | Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Perhaps most importantly, Khan has fought very publicly against Brexit in a city which overwhelmingly voted to stay in the EU.
And admirers cite something less tangible — a sense Khan has captured a wider public mood in London, a city proud of its liberal and multicultural outlook. “On some level he has come to symbolize London’s sense of itself,” a former shadow Cabinet colleague says. “That’s a very powerful position to be in. In tone and in content he is faultless. I can’t think of a single significant occasion in the past four years — whether after a terrorist attack or something else — when Sadiq hasn’t found the right words to say.”
To some, the appeal remains mystifying. Khan is no great public speaker, has no clear ideology and can appear stilted in comparison to the modern populists. “He is robotic,” one aide to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn winces. “You watch him at mayoral question time and he is so wooden.”
“He’s a politician,” another Corbyn aide says dismissively. “It’s all just PR,” a source on Bailey’s campaign adds. Bailey himself accuses Khan of “grandstanding” on the world stage, and says he should be in London working to cut crime rather than lobbying for a Brexit deal that neither Britain nor the EU is ready to offer. “The mayor’s job is to deliver, not to chase headlines,” he says.
Sadiq Khan, superstar
So far, chasing headlines seems to be working. The mayoralty comes with limited powers, yet Khan has used the position to secure a global profile unmatched by almost any civic leader on the planet.
His verbal spats with U.S. President Donald Trump have made him something of a political star across the Atlantic, where in 2016 he threw the opening pitch at a New York Mets baseball game and where two years later he was a keynote speaker at the South By Southwest tech and culture festival alongside stars like Spike Lee, Nile Rodgers and Ethan Hawke.
“I’m not sure ‘star’ is the right word,” Khan says hastily, when I raise this. “What I recognize from the emails and the letters and the postcards I receive is that people see us — [he means London, I think] — as a beacon. They look to London as a city they aspire to. So when they see during Ramadan me breaking my fast with the chief rabbi, they think, ‘Wow.’ When they see in India a mayor of Islamic faith leading Diwali celebrations for Hindus, they think, ‘Wow.’”
I flew with Khan last year to Poland for a weekend of Second World War commemorations, and saw him mobbed by liberal activists who loved the idea of a Western city electing a Muslim mayor.
He’s back on the world stage in Brussels today for talks with the EU’s power players including the European Union’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and European Parliament President David Sassoli.
European Parliament President David Sassoli is meeting with Sadiq Khan in Brussels | Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images
Here in Belgium, too, his face is instantly recognized. On the metro, people stop to say hello. “Welcome to our city,” one lady tells the mayor with a smile. Walking through the European Parliament, heads turn as we walk through busy atriums.
Later someone even asks for an autograph — a blast from a bygone era, yet a strangely appropriate one. Khan can sometimes feel like a politician from another age. His are a politics of handshakes and beaming smiles, of lines carefully crafted and carefully delivered, “like a mayor from 1950s America,” one of our party notes.
Outside the European Commission’s headquarters, I stand in the freezing cold and watch Khan give five identical interviews about Brexit to five waiting camera crews. It’s mind- (and hand-) numbing to watch — goodness knows what it’s like to deliver. Khan is unflinching, uncomplaining, professional. The wind is howling around us, but not a single silver hair is out of place.
Those who know Khan well say he reads every brief religiously, asks detailed questions of his aides, always sticks to his lines. “He never makes a mistake,” one Labour official says. Away from the cameras he goes out of his way to be courteous with every bag carrier and admin clerk we meet.
When I first arrived at the Eurostar terminal, Khan immediately asked about my baby daughter, the progress of my wife’s soon-to-be-published book, my thoughts on the success of my football team (we’re both big Liverpool fans).
It’s a nice touch. All this stuff matters, or at least it used to. But this is the 2020s, the age of rage and unreason. Can old-style professional politics still take you to the very top?
Soft Left
Khan is not celebrated everywhere.
I remember traveling through the Midwest and mountain states of America while covering the 2016 presidential campaign, a few months after Khan had been elected. People frequently raised their shock — and distaste — that London could possibly have elected a Muslim mayor.
Perhaps this is why Donald Trump loves to pick a fight with him. The feeling is certainly mutual, and Khan’s attacks on Trump can feel every bit as tactical as those of the president. Both men know this stuff plays well with their base.
I ask Khan if he’s hoping Trump will lose in November.
“Of course I am,” he says. “I like good guys and good women to win, rather than bad guys. The key thing for the Democrats is to choose somebody who can beat Trump … I think Mike Bloomberg is interesting. He clearly gets under Trump’s skin. If it’s Bloomberg vs. Trump it will be a really interesting campaign; two New Yorkers. One of whom is a successful self-made billionaire. The other one less successful, lost his dad’s money, doing less well.”
Khan knows how to wind Trump up. “I think Buttigieg is interesting,” he adds. “I’d query whether Sanders or Warren or Biden would do as well. But let’s wait and see.”
These are telling endorsements from a Labour politician, particularly one from the so-called soft Left. You won’t catch many Jeremy Corbyn supporters backing a billionaire ex-Republican, nor indeed “Wall Street Pete.” Bloomberg and Khan are old mates, an aide tells me later. “Mike” flew over to London with his chief of staff Kevin Sheekey the morning after Khan’s election in 2016 to congratulate him in person.
Khan was sorry to see Sajid Javid resign from his position as chancellor of the exchequer | Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images
Khan is also close with Sajid Javid, the former Conservative chancellor who resigned this month following a row with Johnson. Javid and Khan share much in common – the two highest-profile Muslims in British politics, both 50 years old this year, both (famously) sons of Pakistani fathers who worked as bus drivers in 1960s Britain.
Khan was “disappointed” to see Javid go, he says, and the pair exchanged text messages after the news broke. “I thought as chancellor he was an ally of London in government,” Khan says. He tries to remember to refer to Javid by his full name, but by the third usage has slipped into calling him “Saj.” It’s a far cry from the die-hard left-wingers for whom every Tory is the enemy.
Khan’s own politics have proved somewhat changeable, and he is viewed with suspicion by those on the Corbynite left. He chaired Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign in 2010 and was one of his chief supporters after he won. He then nominated Corbyn for leader in 2015 to “widen the debate,” but swiftly became an arch-critic and urged him to resign the following year.
Khan is withering now in his assessment of the outgoing Labour leader and his claim to have “won the argument” at the last election. “No amount of spin can even begin to deflect from the disaster of losing the fourth election in a row,” Khan wrote in response.
What’s next?
While the Corbyn years were marked by bitter infighting as hardline left-wingers took control of the party machine, Khan quietly built an alternative power base down the river at City Hall. Key staffers were poached from party HQ, and allies and opponents alike now speak in awed terms about the effectiveness of Khan’s political machine. Veteran Labour officials half-jokingly refer to City Hall as “Noah’s Ark,” a life raft for Labour moderates.
There are downsides to success. Khan — a father of two — admits the job puts a severe strain on family life. He describes himself as a terminal workaholic — “the only time I don’t look at my phone is when I’m playing football on a Sunday morning” — and speaks candidly about the constant security threats he faces. “No other mayor has gone through that,” he says. Khan still uses the underground and the bus network, albeit with a police protection squad in tow.
There are no term limits on the London mayoralty, although neither of the previous post-holders secured a third. Boris Johnson did not even try.
Khan says he can understand Johnson’s decision to stand down. “I think Gordon [Brown] and a few others had the “seven-year rule” [of popularity].”
So does this mean no third term for mayor Khan? “I’m not sure. I’m not decided. I should probably tell my wife before I tell you.”
The answer may yet depend on whether he thinks he stands a chance at winning a bigger crown.
Annabelle Dickson contributed reporting.