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About
Sadiq Khan is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Mayor of London since 2016, making him the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital. Born on 8 October 1970 in Tooting, South London, to immigrant parents from Pakistan—his father a bus driver and his mother a seamstress—he grew up in a working-class family as one of eight children. He attended local state schools before studying law at the University of North London, earning a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1992 and qualifying as a solicitor in 1997 after training at the College of Law in Guildford. Initially working as a human rights lawyer, he represented clients in high-profile cases, including appeals against the death penalty abroad, before entering politics. Elected as MP for Tooting in 2005, he held the seat until 2016, serving in various shadow cabinet roles under Ed Miliband and briefly as Shadow Justice Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn. As Mayor, he has advocated for multiculturalism, environmental policies like the Ultra Low Emission Zone, transport reforms, affordable housing, and police reform, while maintaining an anti-Brexit stance and facing criticism over issues like crime rates and transport fares. Ideologically a social democrat on Labour's soft left, he opposes far-right figures like Robert Spencer and was knighted in 2023 for political and public service.