Sadiq Khan's candidacy challenged UK media

A spoof front page, mocking the London Evening Standard coverage of Sadiq Khan's election. 

Ten days ago London elected its first Muslim mayor in a  contest  that was part of  countrywide local elections.  In the media it became a story that riveted the rest of the world as well, particularly the United States where Islamophobia is being stoked by a leading presidential candidate.

The election was a contest between Conservative MP, Zac Goldsmith and Labour MP, Sadiq Khan. The David vs Goliath battle (Zac Goldsmith, a billionaire and brother of Jemima Khan and Sadiq Khan, a Pakistani immigrant bus driver’s son who grew up in a council flat) had all the elements of high drama written. Khan’s emphatic victory (more than 1.3 million people voted for him) became a toast for multicultural Britain last week.

The Daily Mirror called it the biggest personal mandate in the history of British politics. More importantly, it once again demonstrated that the majority of citizens have little appetite for vengeful and gutter politics or a biased media.

But it was one of the most divisive campaigns in recent times in the UK. The media, both print and television, played an active role in fanning accusations of supporting and sharing platforms with Muslim extremists, depending on which side of the political spectrum they were on.

The free evening newspaper London Evening Standard  had run a campaign which bordered on the bizarre: a series of articles attempting to link Khan with Muslim extremists, despite the his long record of condemning fundamentalism.

One article said his ex brother-in-law was once associated with a radical Muslim group 20 years ago. Another headline said  ‘Sadiq Khan ‘can’t recall if he shared other platforms with extremists’.  There were other insinuating stories as well.

But after Khan reclaimed City Hall from the Conservatives after eight years, Sam Leith wrote in the same paper, in a column titled ‘Çommon sense triumphed over divide and rule’, “There is no better rebuke to the insinuation that every brown person with an interest in the Koran is two handshakes away from a suicide bomber.”

In the British press, the mayoral  contest also accentuated an ideological divide. As a Labour politician, Khan’s election became to some extent inextricably linked with the performance of Labour in the countrywide elections and with the party’s wider politics.

For instance, one of the allegations in the run up to the mayoral campaign was that Sadiq Khan, if elected, would turn London into Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s laboratory for his social welfare policies. Crudely put, the Conservative opponent’s argument was that, if you elect Sadiq Khan, London will be overrun by Muslim extremists and the poor who live on benefits.  The conservative press for its part amplified some of these charges.

Khan used the pages of the Observer to accuse David Cameron and Zac Goldsmith of trying to turn different ethnic groups against each other to stop him winning. The headline read : “Khan accuses PM of using “Trump playbook” tactics.

The Observer also carried a cartoon depicting the defeated Zac Goldsmith sitting in a gutter saying: “I don’t understand, Lynton Crosby (a political strategist) swore that my campaign of dog whistle racism and smear by association would work.” A sewer rat replies to him : “Cheer up, Boris will be joining you after the EU referendum”.

This has been an election in which even the BBC’s political editor has been accused of anti-Labour bias – a controversy that gained ground from January this year, first by Corbyn’s supporters and then by a social media organisation, 38 Degrees, which hosted an online petition which it later withdrew.

Ten days later, the post mortem on the biases is still continuing. On Monday night (May 16)  on the extremely popular satirical TV show – “We have got news for you” - the xenophobic campaign against Sadiq Khan was the centrepiece of ridicule by well known personalities like Ian Hislop and others prominent panelists. And this is likely to retain media interest in the coming days and weeks too.

Finally, as Homa Khaleeli  writes in the Guardian: “A Muslim mayor of London may not end the Islamophobia in British politics any more than Obama’s win cured racism in the US,  [but] it offers a moment, at least, of hope.”

Khan has four years to deliver the promises he has made to Londoners on affordable housing, transportation and clean air. He has already positioned himself as a ‘can do’ leader in a hurry to deliver. There is nothing he wants more than a successful stint as mayor and for the Labour party to wrest power from the Tories in the next general election.

The political editor of the Observer, Toby Helm summed it the significance of Khan’s achievement by saying - “If we ever get a Prime Minister of colour, it will be thanks to Sadiq”.