Khan’s Trump derangement is punishing London

Sadiq Khan and Donald Trump
Sadiq Khan and Donald Trump - Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Sadiq Khan is no stranger to making outlandish political interventions and unnecessarily working against the British national interest. London’s Mayor has accused US President-elect Donald Trump of attacking him in the past on the grounds of his ethnic background and religious affiliation.

On the “High Performance” podcast, Khan, who has previously accused the former president of being one the most egregious examples of the global far-Right threat, also repeated his accusation that Trump has pursued policies which are racist, anti-Muslim, misogynistic, and homophobic. In the interview, he also suggested that Trump was sceptical of the view that one can be both a Westerner and Muslim.

While Khan professes to be a pro-US politician who “loves” American culture, such reckless forays into matters of race, ethnicity, and faith will only further complicate the future transatlantic relationship between the current Labour Government and the Trump-Vance administration. The situation is already tense. Foreign Secretary David Lammy once referring to Trump as a “tyrant” and labelled him as a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”.

What isn’t needed is the Mayor of London jeopardising the quality of US-UK diplomatic relations with his self-absorbed approach to politics. Perhaps he should focus more on problems closer to home such as the capital’s rising knife-related crime, dysfunctional housing market, and unhygienic public transportation systems.

It is not “racist” and “Islamophobic” to suggest that Khan has woefully underperformed in his role (which also means he is the capital’s police and crime commissioner, and co-governor of the failing behemoth that is the Met).

But just as importantly, Khan’s thoughtless identitarian outburst reveals that much of the contemporary British Left fails to understand what has just taken place in the US, or are simply unwilling to recognise it. Trump has cultivated the kind of working-class, multi-racial, inter-faith coalition that should not only be the envy of the Democrats, but of social democrats across the West.

Those who present Trump as an embodiment of white European-heritage supremacy haven’t quite been able to process the outcome that he won two in three Native American voters – possibly ignorant of the fact that he pledged to award the Lumbee Tribe in “swing” state North Carolina with official federal recognition, which could open up access to funds for economic development, education, and healthcare.

Winning an impressive 46 per cent of Latino voters, Trump’s tough stance on illegal immigration helped him win a number of Hispanic-majority counties on the US-Mexico border – including Yuma County in the battleground state of Arizona.

Trump won a majority of voters in the “other” racial demographic, which would include America’s Arab population. While Khan continues to mindlessly portray Trump as a hateful anti-Muslim figure, Bill Bazzi and Amer Ghalib, his mayoral co-religionist counterparts of Dearborn Heights and Hamtramc both endorsed the Republican in the recent presidential election. Maybe Khan would like to provide the Yemen-born Ghalib a lecture on LGBTQIA+ allyship after Hamtramck City Council voted to ban Pride flags on city property under his leadership?

If politicians on the British Left such as Khan are unknowledgeable of America’s complicated electoral landscape, they should think twice before insulting the man who has just secured a spectacular return to the White House. It is time that the Mayor of London put his obsession with Trump to one side and concentrate on the bread-and-butter of making our capital a safer and cleaner place. I won’t be holding my breath.


Dr Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance