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SADIQ KHAN WILL BE THE NEXT MAYOR OF LONDON
Sadiq Khan of the Labour Party will be London's next mayor.
With more than 90% of first-preference votes counted, Khan has effectively beaten his closest rival — the Conservative Party's Zac Goldsmith — with 44%. Meanwhile, Goldsmith has just 35%.
His win now seems certain.
Earlier, Peter Kellner, the former president of polling organisation YouGov, predicted that Khan will win by more than 300,000 votes.
The result is not hugely surprising because, even at 70% of the count, Khan was way ahead of Goldsmith. Bookmakers like Ladbrokes even started to call the end of the race just after midday.
Khan has been the frontrunner for over a month leading up to the elections, but a flurry of party-member suspensions, including that of the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, over allegations of anti-Semitism threatened to hurt his chances.
But while there are signs that it did do some damage to Labour in the council elections, it didn't seem to affect Khan.
He also faced embarrassment when his speech writer, Shueb Salar, quit his job in March following the publication of a video of him brandishing a gun and joking about being a secret hit man was unearthed by the Evening Standard.
But despite these setbacks, Khan has promised popular policies across his campaign. They include:
Housebuilding target: Khan aims to build 50,000 new homes in London a year, among other policies.
More police on the streets: He said that this would be to tackle threats of terrorism.
Freeze transport fares for four years.
The London mayoral contest has been a bitterly fought two-horse race between Goldsmith and Khan. The failed Conservative candidate accused Khan of being a radical and repeatedly attacked his judgment for sharing platforms with extremists. Khan's camp countered that these attacks amounted to "dog-whistle racism" intended to play on voters' prejudices around the new mayor's faith.
Khan, the son of a bus driver who grew up on a London council estate, is the city's first Muslim mayor.
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