Sadiq Khan

Sir Sadiq Aman Khan (born 8 October 1970) is a British politician serving as the third and current mayor of London since 2016. He was previously the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tooting from 2005 until 2016. A member of the Labour Party, Khan is on the party's soft left and has been ideologically characterised as a social democrat.

Born in London into a Pakistani family, Khan earned a law degree from the University of North London. He subsequently worked as a solicitor specialising in human rights issues and chaired the Liberty advocacy group for three years. Joining the Labour Party, Khan was a councillor for the London Borough of Wandsworth from 1994 to 2006 before being elected MP for Tooting at the 2005 general election. He was critical of several policies of Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq and new anti-terror legislation. Under Blair's successor Gordon Brown, Khan was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in 2008, later becoming Minister of State for Transport. A key ally of the next Labour leader, Ed Miliband, he served in Miliband's Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Minister for London.

Khan was elected Mayor of London at the 2016 mayoral election, defeating the Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith, and resigned as an MP. As mayor, he implemented the Hopper fare for unlimited bus and tram journeys for an hour, increased the cost and the area covered by the London congestion charge, and introduced new charges (the T-Charge and the ULEZ) for older and more polluting vehicles driving in the city. He also backed expansion at London City Airport and Gatwick Airport. He was a vocal supporter of the unsuccessful Britain Stronger in Europe and People's Vote campaigns for the UK to remain in the European Union. Khan established the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm following the 2020 George Floyd protests. Although Khan initially froze some Transport for London (TfL) fares, he has implemented transport fare rises since 2021 in return for a £1.6 billion bailout from the UK Government during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also lobbied the government to introduce public health restrictions on several occasions throughout the pandemic. He was re-elected as Mayor in both the 2021 and 2024 London mayoral elections, being the first and only London mayor to win a third term.

Khan is the only mayor of London to have been awarded a knighthood. His policies as Mayor have resulted in making London's transport more accessible and reducing the number of polluting vehicles in central London. Conversely, his tenure had seen rising levels of gun and knife crimes in the city, although this reversed in 2025, with the homicide rate falling to the lowest recorded to date.

Early life

Sadiq Aman Khan was born on 8 October 1970 at St George's Hospital in Tooting, a district in the Wandsworth borough of South London, into a working-class Pakistani immigrant family. His grandparents were Muhajirs who migrated from Lucknow, in the United Provinces of British India (now in Uttar Pradesh, India), to Karachi in West Pakistan (now in Sindh, Pakistan) following the partition of India in 1947. His father Amanullah and his mother Sehrun arrived in England from Pakistan in 1968. Khan was the fifth of eight children, seven of whom were boys. In London, Amanullah worked as a bus driver and Sehrun as a seamstress. Apart from English, Khan is also fluent in Urdu.

Khan and his siblings were raised Sunni Muslims in a three-bedroom council flat on the Henry Prince Estate in Earlsfield. He attended Fircroft Primary School and then Ernest Bevin School, a local comprehensive. Khan studied science and mathematics at A-Level, in the hope of eventually becoming a dentist. A teacher recommended that he study law instead, as he had an argumentative personality. The teacher's suggestion, along with the American television programme L.A. Law, inspired Khan to do so. He studied law at the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University). His parents later moved out of their council flat and purchased their own home. Like his brothers, Khan was a fan of sport, particularly enjoying football, cricket, and boxing.

From his earliest years, Khan worked: "I was surrounded by my mum and dad working all the time, so as soon as I could get a job, I got a job. I got a paper round, a Saturday job – some summers I laboured on a building site." The family continues to send money to relatives in Pakistan, "because we're blessed being in this country". He and his family often encountered racism, which led to him and his brothers taking up boxing at the Earlsfield Amateur Boxing Club. While studying for his degree, between the ages of 18 and 21, he had a Saturday job at the Peter Jones department store in Sloane Square.

Legal career

Before entering the House of Commons in 2005, Khan practised as a solicitor. After completing his law degree in 1991, Khan took his Law Society finals at the College of Law in Guildford. In 1994, he married Saadiya Ahmed, who was also a solicitor.

Also in 1994, Khan became a trainee solicitor at a firm of solicitors called Christian Fisher; the firm undertook mainly legal aid cases. The partners were Michael Fisher and Louise Christian. Khan became a partner at the firm in 1997, and like Christian, specialised in human rights law. When Fisher left in 2002, the firm was renamed Christian Khan. Khan left the firm in 2004, after he became the prospective Labour candidate for the Tooting parliamentary constituency.

During his legal career, he acted in actions against employment and discrimination law, judicial reviews, inquests, the police, and crime, and was involved in cases including the following:

• Bubbins vs United Kingdom (European Court of Human Rights – shooting of an unarmed individual by police marksmen)
• Dr Jadhav v Secretary of State for Health (racial discrimination in the employment of Indian doctors by the health service)
• CI Logan v Met Police (racial discrimination)
• Supt Dizaei v Met Police (police damages, discrimination)
• Inquest into the death of David Rocky Bennett (use of restraints)
• Lead solicitor on Mayday demonstration 2001 test case litigation (Human Rights Act)
• Farrakhan v Home Secretary (Human Rights Act): in 2001, Khan represented the American Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in the High Court and overturned a ban on him entering the United Kingdom, first imposed in 1986. The government subsequently won on appeal.
• In February 2000, Khan represented a group of Kurdish actors who were arrested by Metropolitan Police during a rehearsal of the Harold Pinter play Mountain Language, securing £150,000 in damages for the group for their wrongful arrest and the trauma caused by the arrest.
• Represented Maajid Nawaz, Reza Pankhurst and Ian Nisbet in Egyptian court when they were arrested on charges of trying to revive Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Parliamentary career

First term: 2005–2010

Before entering Parliament, Khan represented Tooting as a councillor on Wandsworth Council from 1994 to 2006, and was granted the title of Honorary Alderman of Wandsworth upon his retirement from local politics.

In 2003, Tooting Constituency Labour Party decided to open its parliamentary selection to all interested candidates, including the incumbent MP since 1974, Tom Cox. This prompted Cox, then in his mid-70s, to announce his retirement rather than risk de-selection. In the subsequent selection contest, Khan defeated five other local candidates to become Labour's candidate for the seat. He was elected to Parliament at the 2005 general election.

Khan was one of the Labour MPs who led the successful opposition to Prime Minister Tony Blair's proposed introduction of 90 days' detention without charge for those suspected of terrorism offences. In recognition of this, The Spectator – a right-wing magazine then edited by Boris Johnson – awarded him the "Newcomer of the Year Award" at the 2005 Parliamentarian of the Year Awards. The magazine's editorial board stated that he had received the award "for the tough-mindedness and clarity with which he has spoken about the very difficult issues of Islamic terror".

In August 2006, two days after seven terrorists were arrested for attempting the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot Khan signed an open letter to Tony Blair that was signed by prominent Muslims and published in The Guardian. The letter criticised UK foreign policy and in particular the 2003 invasion of Iraq, stating that Blair's policies had caused great harm to civilians in the Middle East and provided "ammunition to extremists who threaten us all". In interviews with the BBC, Labour Home Secretary John Reid – who had coordinated the arrests – described the letter as "a dreadful misjudgement", and former Conservative leader Michael Howard described it as "a form of blackmail".