London:
Sadiq Khan, who was re-elected on Saturday for a record third term as mayor of London, rose from humble roots to spar with world leaders and bring consequential change to the British capital.
The 53-year-old Labor Party politician – a former human rights lawyer who grew up in a London public housing complex – comfortably defeated Conservative rival Susan Hall for a third term in City Hall.
He now overtakes predecessor Boris Johnson as the longest-serving holder of the post, which mainly has powers over emergency services, transport and planning in the city of almost nine million inhabitants.
The victory continues a remarkable journey for the son of the Pakistani immigrant bus driver, who became the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when he was first elected in 2016.
As mayor, he made a name for himself as an outspoken critic of Brexit and successive conservative prime ministers, including Johnson, and for a feud with former US President Donald Trump.
The pair became embroiled in an extraordinary war of words after Khan criticized Trump's travel ban on people from certain Muslim countries.
Trump then accused Khan of doing a “very poor job on terrorism” and called him a “stone cold loser” and a “national disgrace”.
The mayor in turn infamously flew Trump's hot air balloon dressed as a baby in a diaper over protests in Parliament Square during his 2018 visit to Britain.
“He once called me a hard loser. Only one of us is a loser, and it's not me,” Khan told AFP during his 2021 campaign.
Knife crime
But Khan's own tenure has not been without controversy, especially over last year's expansion of an Ultra-Low Emission Zone into the world's largest pollution charging scheme.
The daily toll on the most polluting vehicles sparked a fierce reaction on the outskirts of Greater London, with anger over the extra financial burden during a cost of living crisis.
Khan has also been criticized for failing to get to grips with high levels of knife crime and, since last year, for his handling of large weekly pro-Palestinian protests.
Born in London in 1970 to parents who had recently arrived from Pakistan, Khan was the fifth child of seven brothers and a sister.
He grew up in council housing in Tooting, an ethnically mixed residential area in south London, and slept in a bunk bed until he was 24.
His modest background comes into its own in a city that is proud of its diversity and loves its own success story.
Khan often recalls how his father drove one of London's famous red buses and his mother was a seamstress.
He is a skilled boxer and learned the sport to defend himself on the streets against those who hurled racial slurs at him, and two of his brothers are boxing coaches.
Initially he wanted to become a dentist, but a teacher noticed his talent for verbal sparring and steered him towards the legal profession.
He obtained a law degree from the University of North London and joined the law firm Christian Fisher as a trainee lawyer in 1994, eventually becoming a partner.
He specialized in human rights and was chairman of the civil liberties campaign group Liberty for three years.
He represented Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam movement, and Babar Ahmad, a mosque acquaintance who was jailed in the United States after admitting to supporting the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Higher ambitions?
Khan joined Labor at the age of 15 when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in her pomp.
He became a councilor for Tooting in the Conservative-dominated Wandsworth local council in 1994, and a member of parliament in 2005.
He still lives in the area with his wife, lawyer Saadiya, and their two teenage daughters.
Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed him Minister for Communities in 2008 and he later became Minister for Transport, becoming the first Muslim minister to attend Cabinet meetings.
In parliament he voted for gay marriage, which earned him death threats.
As mayor, he promised to focus on providing affordable homes for Londoners and freezing transport rates, but – like many in power around the world – saw his agenda swamped by the pandemic.
He is the third mayor of London, after Labour's Ken Livingstone (2000-2008) and Johnson (2008-2016), with widespread speculation that he could eventually try to follow his predecessor and become prime minister.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)