Sadiq Khan
| Sadiq Khan | |
|---|---|
|
| |
| Name | Sadiq Aman Khan (born 8 October, 1970) |
| Nicknames | Mr Mayor |
| Politics | |
| Party | Labour |
| Constituency | Tooting (2005) |
| Positions | • Mayor of London (2016 - present) • Shadow Secretary of State for Justice (2010 - 2015) |
| Likes | Law, LA Law, Liverpool FC |
| Dislikes | Racist Tory election campaigns, sleep |
| Friends | Ed Miliband, Hilary Benn |
| Enemies | Tories |
| Relationships | |
| Partners | Saadiya (married 1994) |
| Children | Anisah (2000), Ammarah (2002) |
| Personal Attributes | |
| Nationality | English |
| Religion | Muslim |
| Sexuality | Straight |
| Height | 5' 6" |
| Eye Colour | Brown |
| Handedness | Right |
| Accent | Estuary |
| Languages | Urdu |
Yes we KHAN! ~ Sadiq Khan
Sadiq Khan was the Shadow Justice Secretary during the 2010-2015 Parliament and a close ally of the Labour leader Ed Miliband. After the 2015 general election he stood down from his opposition role to run for Mayor of London.
Life and Career[edit | edit source]
Early Life[edit | edit source]
You’re always arguing. Why don’t you be a lawyer, rather than a dentist?~ One of Sadiq's teachers
Sadiq was born in 1970 in London to a family of Pakistani immigrants, the fifth of eight siblings. His grandparents had fled from India to Karachi after the Partition, and his parents Amanullah and Sehrun moved to London in the sixties with their four small children in search of better opportunities. Sadiq was the first of his siblings to be born in England, but he was soon followed by three more brothers.
He grew up on the Henry Prince estate in Earlsfield, where he demonstrated the pragmatism and resourcefulness that would one day win him the mayoralty by embarking on a life of crime. The estate was bounded on one side by the River Wandle- really more of a polluted creek- and Sadiq and his friends used the sunken shopping trolleys littering the river as stepping stones to cross to the fizzy drinks factory on the far side. There they nicked bottles of cherryade, which could be redeemed for money at the local shop after they'd finished their drinks. "You’d get 2p back on each bottle. It was win-win," Sadiq said, describing his escapades.
His father, famously, was a bus driver and his mother a seamstress. Mr Khan was always working overtime on the buses so the family could save up enough money to buy a house and move out of their crowded council flat, but he took Sundays off to take the children to the South Kensington museums. This dedication to intellectual pursuits paid off- seven of his eight children went on to university.
Sadiq was one of them. He attended Fircroft Primary School and Earnest Bevin College, where he took maths, chemistry and biology at A-level with a view to becoming a dentist. A teacher pointed out that he was always arguing and convinced him he'd be happier as a lawyer, so he switched career paths and studied law at the University of North London.
Pre-political Career[edit | edit source]
Sadiq was a visiting lecturer at his old university and a he was a former governor of South Thames FE College. He also served as Vice-Chair of the Legal Action Group and as Chair of the civil liberties pressure group Liberty.
Legal Career[edit | edit source]
Sadiq completed his Law Society finals at the College of Law in Guildford. He worked as a trainee solicitor and assistant solicitor at Christian Fisher Solicitors from 1994 to 1997, training under famous human rights lawyer Louise Christian. After just three years and at the tender age of 27, he was made an equity partner and the firm was renamed Christian Khan.
During his career he specialised in actions against the police, employment and discrimination law and judicial reviews. He was involved in a number of his profile cases, including test cases for the Human Rights Act, a discrimination case against the University of Oxford and cases against the Secretary of State for Health.
He left the firm in 2004 to campaign for Parliament. Christian was angered by his sudden departure and has not spoken to him since.[1]
Early Political Career[edit | edit source]
Sadiq joined the Labour Party at the age of fifteen. His interest in politics was inspired by the contrast he could see between the working conditions of his father, who as a bus driver was unionised and got decent pay and conditions, and his mother, who as a seamstress working in the home wasn't and didn't. He was also inspired by his headmaster Naz Bokhari, the first Muslim headteacher at a UK secondary school, who showed him that "skin colour or background wasn’t a barrier to making something with your life".
From 1994 to 2006 Sadiq was a Councillor for the London Borough of Wandsworth, representing Tooting.
Parliamentary Career[edit | edit source]
They said, 'You're going to be sworn in before the Queen, what sort of bible would you like?' I said 'I swear on the Koran; I'm a Muslim.' They said, 'We haven't got a Koran, can you bring your own?' So I went to Buckingham Palace with my Koran and afterwards they returned it and I said, 'No, can I leave it here for the next person?'~ Sadiq Khan, on his appointment to the Privy Council
In 2003, the Tooting Constituency Labour Party decided to open up its selection process to all interested parties rather than just supporting the sitting MP who had been representing the constituency for nearly 30 years. This prompted the sitting MP to announce his retirement so he didn't have to face the humiliation of being deselected. Sadiq beat 5 other candidates to win the nomination and went on to win the safe seat in the 2005 general election.
In the same year as his election, Sadiq was awarded the Spectator's "Newcomer of the Year Award" for " the tough-mindedness and clarity with which he has spoken about the very difficult issues of Islamic terror". In 2006, Sadiq signed a letter to Tony Blair criticizing his foreign policy.
In 2007 Sadiq sent a newsletter to his constituents in his role as MP. However, it was deemed that on this letter, the New Labour rose logo was "unduly prominent" and could have confused his constituents as to whether he was contacting them as their MP or as a member of the Labour Party. Sadiq paid back the £500 it costs to print the newsletter.
On 3 February 2008 the Sunday Times claimed that a conversation between Sadiq and a prisoner - who was also a friend and constituent of Sadiq's - had been bugged by the anti-terrorism branch of the Metropolitan Police. The then Justice Secretary Jack Straw launched an inquiry was there was concern that this action contravened the Wilson Doctrine. The report concluded that since it was the police and not an MP that had ordered the bugging, the Doctrine did not apply and everything was fine.
In 2008 Sadiq became the second ever Muslim to serve in the UK Government when he was appointed Minister of State for Communities by Gordon Brown. In 2009 Sadiq became the first ever Muslim to serve in Cabinet when he was promoted to Minister of State for Transport. He was also the first MP to announces his promotion on Twitter.
In the 2010 Labour Party leadership election, Sadiq was an early supporter of Ed Miliband and was later appointed his campaign manager. He spearheaded Ed's successful campaign and everyone was really impressed with him. That year Sadiq was named 16th most influential left-winger by the Telegraph. Ed appointed Sadiq Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice. In 2013 he was also made Shadow Minister for London.
He also got into a bit of an issues with his expenses in the 2010 parliament when it was revealed that he claimed for sending out "Christmas, Eid, and birthday cards for constituents" incorrectly. The issue was put down to human error, Sadiq apologised and paid back some money.
Sadiq voted in favour of the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill in 2013 and received death threats and had a fatwa issued against him for doing so.
In 2015, Sadiq nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership, saying that while he did not intend to vote for Jeremy there had to be a wide range of views heard in the campaign. This backfired as Jeremy went on to win the Labour leadership with 59.5% of first preference votes.
| Full List of Appointments |
|---|
| • Minister of State for Communities (4 October, 2008 - 8 June, 2009) |
| • Minister of State for Transport (8 June, 2009 - 11 May, 2010) |
| • Shadow Secretary of State for Transport (14 May, 2010 - 8 October, 2010) |
| • Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, with responsibility for political and constitutional reform (8 October, 2010 - 11 May, 2015) |
| • Shadow Minister for London (16 January, 2013 - 11 May, 2015) |
| • Mayor of London (6 May 2016 - present) |
Mayor of London[edit | edit source]
On 13 May 2015, Sadiq announced that he would be running for the Labour Party nomination for the Mayor of London election[2]. After a very, very long campaign it was announced that Sadiq had won the Labour Party nomination, with 48,001 votes to Tessa Jowell's 33,573 votes in the final round. He said he would continue to serve as MP for Tooting throughout the Mayoral campaign and would only step down from the House of Commons if he was elected as London Mayor.
He ended up facing Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith for the election. This worked in his favour as Zac couldn't even hold a pint correctly let alone put together a coherent election strategy. Zac's team, headed by people who used to work for Lynton Crosby, was terrible and tried to make Sadiq out to basically a terrorist and/or supporter of terrorism. Anyone why had any shred of common sense saw that actually Sadiq was far more fond of talking about his Dad the bus driver than joining a terrorist cell and that the Tory campaign was just racist. Lots of other fuckery happened but basically Sadiq won because he wasn't a complete shit-head and more people could relate to him than Zac.
In the end Sadiq won the election with 44% of the vote - 1.3 million votes, giving him the largest personal mandate of any elected politician in UK history, and making him the first Muslim Mayor of any capital in the EU.
Personal Life[edit | edit source]
Sadiq first met his wife Saadiya, a solicitor, when they were both sixth-formers. Because dating was forbidden in their culture, they had to keep their relationship clandestine. Sadiq wooed her by getting her Fillet-O-Fish at McDonald's then taking her to the cinema.[3] Despite his keen sense of romance, she married him in 1994 and they now have two teenage daughters.
Sadiq has ridiculous amounts of energy and seems to be able to function almost entirely without sleep. He works seven days a week, averages five-and-a-half hours of sleep per night, and still manages to get up early to make his daughters breakfast every morning while his wife is getting ready for work. During the final week of his mayor campaign he slept only an hour each night.
Despite this, he somehow finds the strength to train for marathons. He ran the London Marathon in 2014 and completed it in 4 hours, 19 minutes and 17 seconds. He also knows how to box. Sadiq has the relentless perseverance of a hobbit-sized Terminator and it is wisest not to mess with him.
Sadiq is a keen follower of both football and cricket. When he was a child he and his brothers faced racial abuse and risked getting beaten up when they went to football matches in London, so Sadiq felt safer at home watching Match of the Day on TV. He didn't want to support the local teams because they had racist fans.[4] Instead, he became a Liverpool fan "because they were playing such great football at the time and winning".[5]
Portrayal[edit | edit source]
In the Media[edit | edit source]
Media tends to overlook him most of the time (possibly because he's so tiny), unless he does something like say that Labour would not undo Conservative cuts legal aid, in which case the Guardian tries to rip him a new one. The Telegraph and the right wing in general are wary of him given his history of taking the police to court for discrimination and abuse - oh, and his religion, of course.
In Fanon[edit | edit source]
Sadiq is a minor NextGen character, occasionally shipped with Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander or Hilary Benn.
On tumblr he is often called by his nickname of "Chaste Tooting Maiden".
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/03/pugilist-sadiq-khan-s-quest-become-mayor-london
- ↑ https://twitter.com/dats/status/598446703910477824
- ↑ http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/labour-london-mayor-hopeful-sadiq-6455093
- ↑ http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/03/pugilist-sadiq-khan-s-quest-become-mayor-london
- ↑ http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mp-says-its-time-call-6775580
