SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
He is his city's first Muslim mayor, the first one of South Asian descent. He's cutting bus fares, and his name is not Mamdani. London mayor, Sadiq Khan, is celebrating 10 years in office, and NPR's Lauren Frayer met up with him.
SADIQ KHAN: (Laughter) Well listen, by the way, Zohran is somebody who's charismatic, good-looking and young, so I hate him.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Sadiq Khan, age 55, jokes about his New York counterpart's youthful good looks and says they've traded texts about what they've both suffered.
KHAN: He also faced some real anti-Muslim hatred there, and Zohran came through that with positivity and hope. New York is the second greatest city in the world.
FRAYER: NPR was supposed to ride an open-top double-decker bus with Mayor Khan as he takes a page from the Mamdani playbook and cuts city bus fares. But the London drizzle has - shocker - forced us indoors.
KHAN: All the cliches and...
FRAYER: Yeah.
KHAN: ...Stereotypes are there, yeah, yeah.
FRAYER: Yeah, yeah.
Over the past 10 years, Khan, who is from Prime Minister Keir Starmer's center-left Labour Party, has brought London free school meals, more public housing, electric buses, bike paths, and a low emission zone that's been heralded by environmentalists but criticized by some motorists. He was elected when Barack Obama was still president. He's led London through terror attacks, through Brexit.
KHAN: I think the biggest act of economic self-harm any country's ever inflicted.
FRAYER: Through the corona virus and President Trump's personal insults.
KHAN: I'm living rent-free inside this guy's head.
FRAYER: Trump called Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants, disgusting and falsely accused him of imposing Islamic law here.
KHAN: He's clearly somebody who believes there is a clash of civilizations between somebody who's a follower of Islam and a Muslim like I am and being a Westerner. Here in London, we're diverse, we're progressive, and we are incredibly successful. And if you're Trump or one of his supporters, we're the antithesis of all he believes in, and that's one of the reasons there'll be a target on our back.
FRAYER: A target for disinformation, he says. He blames social media, state actors and MAGA supporters for painting London as dangerous when actually, per capita...
KHAN: London is safer, objectively speaking, than any city or state in the USA. Homicide levels are the lowest since records began. Knife crime is down. Gun crime is down.
FRAYER: But London's streets are filled with anger over Israel's actions in Gaza, the arrests of thousands of mostly peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrators and a spate of attacks on British Jews, which Khan says breaks his heart. He's deployed more police to Jewish areas of the capital.
KHAN: What I'd say to those people protesting is, look, of course, you've got strong views about Palestine. Indeed, I'm - you know, I've got strong views about that as well. But be cognizant, even though you're not breaking the law, you're causing heightened fear to our Jewish friends, colleagues and neighbors, and so be tempered in how you behave.
FRAYER: Khan has been in office through three U.S. presidents and six British prime ministers, and there may soon be a seventh. His Labour Party is currently in turmoil over whether to replace Prime Minister Starmer. Last week, Labour suffered big losses in local elections.
KHAN: And this was more than a shellacking to the Labour government.
FRAYER: A far-right anti-immigrant party made sweeping gains. Khan says he's worried that's a precursor to what could happen nationally. He says the ruling party has made mistakes, but that some of what's pulled down Starmer's approval ratings has been outside his control.
KHAN: You know, we've got Trump's tariffs. We've got this war in Iran causing big problems in terms of cost of living in London, in terms of a number of factors affecting our businesses.
FRAYER: Khan is a friend of the beleaguered prime minister's and is not calling for his ouster. He says he's hopeful Starmer can turn things around. The mayor is no stranger to criticism. He's managed to win three elections, though, in London, through a pandemic, through terror attacks and through insults from an American president. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, London.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
