“My name is Sadiq Khan and I’m the Mayor of London,” he said after a bitterly fought election. Whether or not he meant it as just a statement of fact, for voters of South Asian origin in the British capital the words would have carried a particularly affirming resonance. In the end, Mr. Khan triumphed easily in the May 5 vote, giving his Labour Party much-needed cheer. The London mayoral election has been a prestigious one since the directly elected office was created in 2000. It helped that Mr. Khan’s two, and only, predecessors were larger-than-life figures who freely took on their party leaderships, giving the office a higher profile than its limited powers may merit. Ken Livingstone staged his 2000 campaign at odds with the Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, still wildly popular at the time. Boris Johnson, consistently flamboyant and attention-seeking, now leaves the office to head straight off on a bus tour to rally voters around the Leave option in the Brexit referendum on June 23. Prime Minister David Cameron, of Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party, invokes the spectre of war and isolation if Britain does indeed exit the European Union. But the prestige of the office derives in greater measure from the civic ambitions Mr. Livingstone and Mr. Johnson realised in their respective two-term stints.
Attracting investment and talent while ensuring urban inclusion is a growing challenge in big cities around the world — and London, with its global city dimensions, continues to project 21st century challenges and opportunities more engagingly than any other. For example, Mr. Livingstone proved critics wrong by successfully implementing the congestion tax and using the revenue to strengthen public transport, creating a template for urban planners. Mr. Johnson giddily got on a bicycle, withstanding outrage from motorists for taking away space for cycles. During his campaign, Mr. Khan promised to freeze transport fares, significantly increase the number of homes created in the city annually, and reserve half of these for Londoners. Zac Goldsmith, his Conservative rival, was comparatively vague on specifics, and mounted what can be aptly described as a ‘racist’ attack on Mr. Khan by accusing him of engaging with Muslim “extremists”. This was an attempt to harness, if not create, Islamophobia. That London’s diverse electorate rejected Mr. Goldsmith’s polarising campaign lends a heartwarming sheen to the 2016 mayoral election. After his election, Mr. Khan spoke of the need for “big tent” politics rather than politics that speaks almost exclusively to the ideological base — a message seen to be directed at his party chief, Jeremy Corbyn, too. That is why it is not only the rise of the son of a bus driver and a seamstress of Pakistani origin that makes Mr. Khan’s election so fascinating from afar. It is also the promise of a new cosmopolitan politics.
