When Narendra Modi visited London last year he told the crowd at Wembley Stadium that it would not be long before there was a British-Indian at 10, Downing Street. However, before that can happen it must be galling for the Indian prime minister and his supporters that a British-Pakistani has already reached City Hall in London.
Sadiq Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants, beat his nearest opponent Zac Goldsmith by a margin of four lakh votes to become the mayor of London, getting the largest personal mandate for any politician in UK history. Khan, a Labour MP from his place of birth, Tooting, in south London, has catapulted himself to become the most powerful ‘brown’ person in Britain and currently the most likely to reach Downing Street.
On the other hand, the Conservative candidate, Goldsmith, the son of a billionaire, is living down the infamy of running one of the dirtiest campaigns in UK’s recent political history – a campaign which looks as if it took lessons straight from the BJP.