Sadiq khan

During last night’s BBC mayoral debate, Zac Goldsmith was asked whether he had run a racist campaign against Sadiq Khan — following negative press surrounding the Labour candidate’s links to extremists. After Khan found himself under fire for sharing platforms with characters like Suliman Gani, as well as for his work for Louis Farrakhan — the man who claimed Hitler was a ‘very great man’ — Labour’s Yvette Cooper complained that the Tories’ mayoral campaign amounts to racism: ‘It’s time to call it out for what it really is before it gets worse. What started as a subtle dog-whistle is becoming a full-blown racist scream.’ However, Cooper hasn’t always appeared to hold such strong views when it comes

As the European referendum campaign gains momentum, the London mayoral election has had to take a backseat in recent weeks when it comes to setting the news agenda. Tonight the mayoral candidates had a chance to turn this around as part of the BBC’s London’s Mayor debate. While Respect candidate George Galloway was left out of the line-up, the five main candidates — Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan, Caroline Pidgeon, Sian Berry and Peter Whittle — joined Andrew Neil for the biggest debate of the campaign. With the election widely seen to be a two-horse race between Khan and Goldsmith, the pair dominated the evening as their campaign feuds bubbled to the surface. The first topic on the agenda was

It’s not turning out to be a great week for Zac Goldsmith. While the Conservative MP continues to lag behind Labour’s Sadiq Khan in the polls, he has been accused of running a racist campaign. Despite this, Goldsmith showed no signs of watering down his attacks yesterday in an interview with the Evening Standard. Goldsmith used the interview to criticise Khan for sharing platforms — and posing for a photo — with Suliman Gani, an Imam who says women are ‘subservient’ and speaks at segregated rallies. ‘To share a platform nine times with Suliman Gani, one of the most repellent figures in this country, you don’t do it by accident.’ However, the next time

As Zac Goldsmith continues to lag behind Sadiq Khan in the polls, even the most die-hard Tories are beginning to lose hope in their candidate. In fact, it seems Zac is falling out of fashion at a rate of knots. Samantha Cameron’s sister — and David Cameron’s sister-in-law — Emily Sheffield appears to be getting behind Khan’s campaign. Sheffield, who is deputy editor of Vogue, has retweeted one of the Labour mayoral candidate’s campaign pledges on Twitter. Given that Sheffield usually supports her brother-in-law’s party — ridiculing Labour’s pink women van in the last election — this is a very worrying sign indeed for Goldsmith. What’s more, it seems that Khan is

In March, Zac Goldsmith was named the most ‘pro-business‘ London mayoral candidate in a ComRes poll. According to the survey, 65 per cent of Londoners think Goldsmith is pro-business, compared with 39 per cent for Sadiq Khan. However, despite this vote of confidence in Goldsmith’s approach to business, a closer look at the Conservative mayoral candidate’s CV suggests that he may actually be lacking in business acumen on a personal level. Despite several attempts at running businesses, few of his ventures have taken off. In fact, of eight companies he has been involved with, six have dissolved and one is losing money. One of Goldsmith’s first attempts at business was as a director

Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the party has been dogged by rumours of anti-semitism in certain factions of the party. Matters were only worsened last week with the re-admittance and then re-expulsion of Vicki Kirby, a former Labour parliamentary candidate who has suggested that Isis ought to attack Israel. Now there are concerns that the negative publicity could damage Sadiq Khan’s London mayoral bid. Last week, Jonathan Arkush — the President of the Board of Deputies — claimed that the Labour candidate could struggle to win votes from London’s 180,000 Jews. While Khan has made clear that Labour needs to ditch its ‘anti-Jewish’ image, he may wish to take a closer look

As Zac Goldsmith fights to be the next Mayor of London against Labour’s Sadiq Khan, he is striving to appeal to all Londoners. Alas, somewhere in the process of doing this, he appears to have got a bit confused. In an interview with Pink News — the news website aimed at the LGBT community, Goldsmith said that he wanted to be a mayor for everyone, employing the term ‘pansexual’ to try and make his point: Pink News: Would you like to be the mayor for everyone? ZG: I would use the term pansexual here, if my understanding is correct. https://vine.co/v/iXa9lEB5Jrx While Mr S suspects that Goldsmith means that he wants to appeal

Sadiq Khan, I’m sure you and your supporters think you’re being super right-on when you say that it would send a ‘phenomenal message’ to the world if Londoners were to elect their first-ever Muslim mayor in May. But actually you’re playing an incredibly dangerous game. You’re Islamifying what ought to be a straight political contest. You’re turning the vote over who should run London into a test of Londoners’ tolerance of Islam. You’re asking voters to prove they aren’t prejudiced, when all they should be doing is expressing a political preference. Stop it. The Khan camp has been playing the Muslim card from the get-go. Last year, Khan talked up

John Bercow hit out at Greg Hands for his ‘long-winded, boring and unnecessary’ answer in the Commons: Ken Livingstone said that his history of rebellions, as well as those rebellions orchestrated by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, proved they were right: The former London mayor also said Labour was ‘completely out of kilter with the membership’ and that it was time for Labour MPs to come to terms with Corbyn: George Osborne had a dig at Labour’s appointment of Yanis Varoufakis. The Chancellor said he was signed up by the party because ‘Chairman Mao was dead and Mickey Mouse was busy’: And Sadiq Khan vowed to crack down on Uber

Last night Sadiq Khan appeared on Newsnight to discuss his bid to be the next Mayor of London. Evan Davis grilled the Labour mayoral candidate on his extended family’s supposed links to extremists as well as his approach to business which appears to be at loggerheads with Jeremy Corbyn’s: ED: Corbyn has said ‘now is the time more than ever to call for public ownership and control of the banking system’. This is only 2012, this isn’t ancient history he was saying it. I mean you’re at a completely different end of the party SK: Let me tell you something, Jeremy Corbyn’s name is not on the ballot paper on May

If a dirty mind is a perpetual feast, then a filthy mind is an open sewer. You see where the manure is coming from. More to the point, you know where it is going. When Galloway faced a challenge for the Bradford West seat from the Labour candidate, Naz Shah, he thought the best way to respond was to denounce a woman’s tales of abuse. He reduced Shah’s forced marriage at the age 15, to a ‘slander of her own family, community and city’ and an appeal to ‘racist stereotypes’. When he declared Bradford an ‘Israel free-zone,’ Muslim and white anti-Semites paid attention. And when he began his campaign to be London mayor by saying that the Labour candidate Sadiq