Thursday, Mar 28, 2024 | Last Update : 03:01 PM IST

  Goldsmith trails Pak-origin Sadiq Khan in mayor contest

Goldsmith trails Pak-origin Sadiq Khan in mayor contest

REUTERS
Published : May 2, 2016, 6:32 am IST
Updated : May 2, 2016, 6:32 am IST

Sadiq Khan, a Muslim legislator from Britain’s Opposition Labour party, is the strong favourite to win London’s mayoral election on Thursday after a bitter contest marked by religious tensions and acc

Candidate for London Mayor Sadiq Khan. (Photo: AP)
 Candidate for London Mayor Sadiq Khan. (Photo: AP)

Sadiq Khan, a Muslim legislator from Britain’s Opposition Labour party, is the strong favourite to win London’s mayoral election on Thursday after a bitter contest marked by religious tensions and accusations of racism.

Polls show Mr Khan, the son of a bus driver, is as much as 20 percentage points ahead of rival Conservative Zac Goldsmith in the race to run one of the world’s top financial centres. If he wins, he will succeed current Conservative mayor Boris Johnson to become the first Muslim to head a major western capital.

London’s population of 8.6 million is among the most cosmopolitan in the world and it is rare for identity politics to enter British campaigning.

Yet Mr Goldsmith, with the support of Prime Minister David Cameron, has for weeks focused on Mr Khan’s faith and past appearances alongside radical Muslim speakers at functions, accusing him of giving a “platform, oxygen and cover” to extremists.

Mr Khan, a former human rights lawyer, said he has fought extremism all his life and insists that he regrets sharing a stage with speakers who held “abhorrent” views.

He has accused Mr Goldsmith, the elite-educated son of a billionaire financier, of using Donald Trump-style tactics to divide Londoners along faith lines, as well as being part of an out-of-touch wealthy elite.

“There’s a chance that there are people who are almost subconsciously put off (voting for Mr Khan) by the dog-whistle racism... People who wouldn’t like to say ‘I’m not going to vote for Sadiq Khan’, but will have a wobble at the ballot box,” said Anthony Wells, director of political and social opinion polling at YouGov. But he added that the impact was unlikely to be enough to allow Mr Goldsmith to pull off a surprise victory.

“The only effect of the Zac Goldsmith campaigning is probably just to entrench all those long-standing issues the Conservative Party have got with appealing to ethnic minority voters,” he said.

Location: Canada, Ontario, London