The shadow London minister on housing, transport, policing, forthcoming elections, his fellow Muslims, the "part-time" mayor Boris Johnson and whether he might run for the job himself
Sadiq Khan is the Labour MP for Tooting in South London, the current shadow justice secretary and a former transport minister. He is also shadow minister for London, in which role he is plotting a three-year election strategy specifically for the capital and, of course, bashing Boris Johnson.
Born in London in 1970, he grew up in a council house as one of eight children. He is also an observant Muslim, a liberal on social issues - including gay marriage and, although a non-drinker, on pubs - and a possible Labour candidate for the next mayoral election.
I asked him about the present mayor, the policy areas in which London mayors' powers are greatest - transport, housing and policing - and his desire to see more participation in mainstream politics by ethnic minority citizens.
What is Boris Johnson doing wrong? After all, he's such a fun guy.
Well, Boris Johnson is extremely charming and charismatic, and if you were to ask me to choose five people I'd want to have a cappuccino with I think Boris may be one of them. But do we really want the top job in London chosen according to who is most charismatic?
My criticism of Boris Johnson is that he's a part-time mayor now. The impression I have is that he is treading water, plotting how he can improve his application for the job he wants next, which is leader of the Conservative Party. As a consequence we're being let down.
He would say he's trying to promote and encourage growth and jobs in London. That's why he's going to China in a while, to drum up inward investment. What's wrong with that?
Well there's nothing wrong at all with trying to retain London's place as the capital of the universe, which is what Ken [Livingstone] tried to do. But the way to do it is to improve our infrastructure, ensure that people can afford to live here and use public transport, and improve the cultural life of London.
A London mayor's largest area of power and responsibility is transport. What do you think is wrong with Mayor Johnson's policies in this area?
Well, let me say something before that, which is about the challenges we have as Labour in London. We've got big elections in 2014 - borough and European elections on the same day, May 22, for the first time ever. Then we've got the general election on May 7, 2015, then the London mayoral election in May 2016.
We need as a party to make sure we've got a strategic offer for London that makes Londoners feel that Labour has thought about them. What you can't do is have 32 separate manifestos [one for each borough] in 2014, a separate general election manifesto, which we try to fit all London's unique issues into, and then, later on, something on the back of an envelope for 2016.
So transport, obviously, will come into that. When I was minister of state for transport I saw what a big opportunity London has to shape how our country works.
The way I see it today's transport problems in London are: one, affordability; two capacity. Tomorrow's problem is infrastructure. A zone 1-6 annual travelcard has gone up by £440 [from £1,784 to £2,224] since Boris Johnson became mayor. The cost of a single bus journey has gone up by 56% [from 90p to £1.40]. On international league tables London is the most expensive city to use public transport.
At the same time, he's spent £60m on a cable car that nobody uses, the buses he's brought in cost more than the alternatives and take fewer passengers, he's removed the western extension of the congestion charge zone, there's no strategic plan about a successor to Crossrail. So where is the thinking about infrastructure for the future?
He would say there's a problem about paying for it. There's not likely to be more money coming from central government in the near future, yet you want more capacity and to keep fares down too. How can the sums add up?
You start by thinking about people's travel patterns. We know that the population of London currently is about 8.2 million. According to the census it will be 9.2 million by 2021. We also have a housing crisis. If you were mayor and you were thinking about the future, you would be thinking about where the next housing goes. Rather than having people commuting for one hour, or one hour and 30 minutes from home into work, what about bringing home closer to work?
Having people living nearer to work will help with the transport capacity problem. So you want a mayor who is full-time focused on London, thinking about using the brownfield sites in inner London for housing and speaking to good designers about good quality housing there, nearer to places of work.
Some of that will have to be high-density housing, and I think we shouldn't assume that high density housing equates to bad housing. Karen Buck [Labour MP for Westminster North] is one of the country's leading housing experts. She reminded me recently that the place in London with the highest density housing is in one of the wards on her patch, and it is fantastic housing.
So there are ways of addressing these problems without necessarily increasing the contribution made by the general taxpayer or by increasing fares. The other thing is that for the last three or four years there's been a surplus in the TfL budget.
Yes, but there have been a lot of arguments about the meaning of that surplus, haven't there?
I remember – and Jenny Jones [the Green Party AM] will tell this story better than I do – Jenny Jones, Val Shawcross [Labour AM] and Boris Johnson coming to lobby me, asking for extra dosh for something and I pointed out to Boris how much money he had in his kitty, and Jenny Jones and Val Shawcross will bear witness to the fact that he didn't deny that he had huge surpluses in his budget.
I'd rather that were used for reducing fares than to give 350 senior managers at TfL a salary of more than £100,000. So I think it's about prioritizing. London's problem today is affordability. In the medium to long term it's capacity, and in the long term it's infrastructure. You know, Crossrail will having started running by 2016 and then what?
Transport for London have always said they need that surplus for the stuff they've got to build and improve: the next Crossrail, the continuing Tube upgrades and so on. That's the dilemma isn't it?
When I was Crossrail minister we spoke to London First [the body representing London's largest business and its universities]. We got through the special levy for business to contribute towards Crossrail and so we had this unique funding system whereby Crossrail was paid for by a combination of the general taxpayer, the London taxpayer and businesses. Question: where are the discussions taking place now with businesses and central government about the next big infrastructure projects in London?
In a different way we've got business contributing to funding the Underground extension into the Nine Elms redevelopment. Are you happy with that arrangement?
If you look at the ambition [Labour] Lambeth has for that development, and then look at how Eddie Lister [the former, long-time leader of Wandsworth, now Mayor Johnson's deputy for planning] and Ravi Govindia [Lister's successor as Wandsworth leader] approached it you'll see that the problem with the Wandsworth approach is that it's laissez faire.
Nine Elms could be the biggest job creation scheme in the country if we get it right. The problem is, nobody seems to be in charge of what's happening there. So if we're not careful it will be another example of very few apprenticeships and very few local building jobs created.
If you compare that with Newham, where Robin Wales, a friend of mine, is mayor. Some people call him a control freak, but he's looking after Newham's interests. What's Robin been saying? He's been saying, look, the Olympics are coming to my manor, I want to make sure local people get the jobs. Let's skill them up. Let them get the jobs so they're sustainable jobs, and let's try and get Newham's economy going.
Compare and contrast with laissez faire Ravi – a friend of mine as well, by the way – and Eddie Lister. It's all arms-crossed, let the market dictate and decide. That's not the way you run a vibrant economy.
Going back to the TfL surplus, if it's not for future projects what's the point of it in your view?
Well, Londoners that I speak to are suspicious that it's a war chest for a fare freeze before the next mayoral election. When you speak to the people who are working Londoners, they will tell you that a huge proportion of their disposable income is used on fares.
What about buses? The London assembly transport committee is conducting an investigation into the service at the moment. What should Mayor Johnson be doing to make the service better?
When I was transport minister I did a tour of the country on buses, and without a doubt London has the best buses in the country. Why? Because when Ken Livingstone became mayor he invested in high quality buses and dot matrix signs at bus stops. People laughed at Ken for that. But he invested in buses that were accessible for the disabled, good bus stops and buses that were environmentally friendly.
TfL need to consider doing something about the number of empty double decker buses. With the technology available now they could print off for you who is using what buses at what time of day. It's not rocket science. But you need somebody who's going to take charge of this and reprioritize resources. It isn't necessarily going to cost more money.
You mentioned congestion charging earlier. Should there be more road space management by that means? If so, how should it be gone about and do you accept that politically it is a difficult idea to sell to voters?
The Western Extension of the congestion charge was a big issue in the 2008 election. The voters gave Boris a mandate in relation to that [to conduct a new consultation and be bound by the result] and that still holds. My criticism, though, is that you've got to find the money it generated from somewhere else. There was no consideration given [to its financial implications] by Boris Johnson, because he simply wanted to win.
Should Labour be looking at more road-pricing? Not necessarily re-instating the western extension as it was, but at other road-pricing schemes. Boris Johnson's own transport strategy examines it as an option (pages 271-2).
I'm not sure about that. But I think it's possible to have good public transport, to encourage cycling, to encourage walking to work, to design houses in such a way as to have them near hubs of work, without necessarily revisiting road-pricing as it was with the 2008 model. But, you know, I think nothing should be off the table.
And more priority for buses. Boris is cautious about modal hierarchies.
There are several things you can do with buses, which both Ken and Boris Johnson have sought to do and are carrying on doing. For example, giving certainty to bus journey times and making sure the utility companies aren't digging up the roads. All that sort of stuff.
I recall that the Mayor was most grateful to you for giving the go-ahead to his road permit scheme.
I gave him the power to do so. It was very important to do so.
Let's move on to housing again. Boris Johnson's latest estimate is that London needs another 40,000 homes built every year. I've heard Ken Livingstone say recently that we should aim for 50,000. How should a London mayor help such ambitious targets to be met?
This goes back to one of the challenges – well, I call them opportunities – we have for Labour London. London is so different to the rest of the country, it needs its own offer. The housing issue in London is now a crisis. We both know that there are middle-class parents, both working and who've got growing children, who can't afford to rent let alone buy. The average age of the first-time buyer in London is 38. More than 50% of Londoners now rent – this is a crisis.
Yes, of course we need to stop letting agents abusing private sector tenants and yes we've got to try and regulate landlords. But we need new house building. That's why I think the mayor should be interventionist when it comes to the London Plan, saying that a certain percentage of housing on this brownfield site needs to be affordable.
Secondly, you need to make sure the 32 London authorities understand the crisis. Thirdly, I think it's worth thinking about if there are things we can try that will stop the perverse situation…last month's Financial Times carried a report saying that 75% of new houses built in London are bought by foreigners. Look, if it means legislating, we've got to legislate for that.
How can you legislate to stop that?
Let me give you an example. Camden Council are lobbying the treasury and saying, hey look, people who have a second home – an empty home – let's charge them more council tax, right? Similarly, why couldn't – and I'm not saying this is policy – why couldn't the Treasury give consideration to working out whether you're domiciled in this country and have got a second home? Why couldn't the Treasury look into if there's a way of either making that not possible or, if you can't do that, then you make sure that the planning gain for London is so huge – cos you can do it by pricing – that we can use that gain for doing other things in London. Not difficult to do.
This is my point about Boris. He did a very good thing by asking Tony Travers to deliver the London Finance Commission plan. Good report, actually. But he gets this piece of work done and then it just sits on the shelf cos he's busy going to China and the Tory Party conference and Australia and all the stuff that Boris Johnson likes doing. Why not use that piece of work as a lobbying vehicle to say to the chancellor of the exchequer – I know he's a rival – but, look, you know, London needs this. Seventy-five percent of new builds going to foreigners – just think about that.
We shouldn't necessarily assume that that 75% are all extremely wealthy and just buying it to sit on it though. I read somewhere that fairly middle class Malaysians are buying houses here too. Are you saying "London homes for Londoners"? "Foreigners, keep out"?
No, no. What I'm saying is that these are the sorts of tricksy questions that you want the person in charge of London to be addressing. And they're not being addressed.
So the objective would be to lessen one of the inflationary pressures on property…
Absolutely.
And also the accumulation of homes that aren't actually lived in?
Yeah, so there's two issues. One is rent and one is affordable to buy. You've got to build more housing, use the planning regime. Look over the last five, ten years, who have the new homes built gone to? Boris Johnson would say if he was sitting here, or the government would say, we've built x thousand houses over the last three years. Which is true, they have built how ever many thousand houses it is.
My point is too many of those houses haven't gone to people in housing crisis, people who are in a bunk bed in their mum and dad's house or given a sofa at their auntie's or whatever. And we've got to address that because the alternative is those people have to find a house in Outer London which inflates the transport problem, cos they have to commute in.
Would new, high density new homes in Inner London be big enough for families?
That's a separate issue. Putting aside the effects that universal credit will have, balconies aren't enough for families. So the Mayor of London should say when he considers planning applications that he wants a certain number to be three-bedroom and four-bedroom, and have to be built into the scheme.
Is that the best way for a Mayor to use those powers? Ken Livingstone had his "50 percent rule" for affordable homes, which was a promise to stick his nose in and make life difficult if development plans proposed less than that, but it didn't always happen. Boris did away with that rule, saying it put off developers and meant you ended up with less of everything. Is there nothing in that argument at all?
The consequence of Boris Johnson's philosophy in Tooting, in the road that my mum lives on, is that we have four-bedroom properties just built going for £800,000. And that's because Wandsworth Council have basically allowed the developers to do what they want.
Now, I haven't got anything against people buying an £800,000 house in Tooting. But that doesn't address the crisis there is in relation to people in Tooting not being able to find somewhere to rent or to buy. I think the mayor should be doing something about it.
I also think we need to start coming up with a better definition of affordable housing. This idea that you can simply change the definition and call something at 80% of market rates affordable is just a joke.
Perhaps the goal should be that Londoners on low through to middle incomes should have a reasonable chance of affording a decent place to live in London. If so, should there be more social housing as conventionally defined (as opposed to "affordable rent")? Should Labour accept that the private rented sector will keep growing and produce policies to encourage and improve it? Should most of us accept that we won't own our own homes here, even if we've grown up in London and are on £35,000 a year?
You speak to Americans and Europeans, and they say how they are not obsessed with their home being their castle and all that. But I don't think that's going to change here. We can talk about the consequences of the right-to-buy revolution, unintended or intended, but when I speak to constituents who have benefited from that, they feel it was a big thing for them, because they can now pass on the equity to their children.
I don't think you can put that genie back in the bottle. People want to own their own property. We've got to recognize that. With the best will in the world we might wish people would all want to rent and that that would address some of the problems, but it's not realistic.
So you've got to have a combination of different options. It's got to be bespoke. You've got your spectrum – those that are poor, those that have a decent salary and decent savings but can't afford to buy - and you've got to have a spectrum in terms of offers to residents of London.
But it would be very easy for a Labour government to legislate to stop letting agents from ripping off tenants. I've got constituents who, when they renew their contract year on year, have to pay another £200 for nothing. So you've got to make it less oppressive to rent. When Robin Wales's team inspects properties that aren't part of Newham's regulation system they find they've got, you know, 24 people living in a three-bedroom house.
Do you like Newham Council's landlord accreditation scheme?
Yes. I think it's very exciting. What Robin Wales has managed to do is persuade landlords to raise their game. The constant gripe you get from the right is that if you put too much red tape on landlords, they'll pull their stock out of the market. But there's a way of having regulation that's sensible, fair, and proportionate, and which wouldn't make them do that.
One of the biggest gripes my constituents have is having to move every year, moving their kids out of school, moving their furniture and everything, it's a nightmare. I was brought up on a council estate. We knew we could stay there for as long as we wanted to stay there, and then my dad saved up and bought his own property. But we had that stability and I know the benefit of that stability.
The reason why Shelter's piece of work [advocating a new Stable Rental Contract] is interesting is that it offers a way to give some stability and certainty through long-term contracts, and because any rent increase is linked to inflation, so as a tenant you'd have an idea of what rents are going to be in the future, and you'd get rid of this perverse situation where the landlord can just turn up and say, I'm increasing your rent by ten percent.
I'm also interested in looking at various ideas people have for how you could have rent controls. How might they be enforced? What are the upsides and the downsides?
You've got to get landlords to buy into regulation though, haven't you?
Absolutely. It would be catastrophic if the future Mayor of London announced a policy and suddenly landlords stopped renting their properties. That's why you have to be cautious about how you do it. But there are various models out there worth exploring.
What do you think about Shelter's proposals for a larger, simplified and mainstream shared ownership scheme? In London it might almost be a kind of renting-plus, but people would own a bit of their own home.
Well, that's one way of bringing the developers onside. Because if you've got a big plot of land and you've got this mayor breathing down your neck saying x percent has got to be affordable and you can come up with this shared ownership they can still get profit out of it.
Are too many Labour boroughs bamboozled and seduced by property developers?
I sat for twelve years on a planning committee in Wandsworth. Both Labour and Conservative councils are bamboozled by these developers, who come in with these very swish plans. That said, most councilors in London, Labour, Conservative or whoever, try not to be nimby about it because they recognize there's a crisis.
The issue is, what is the most you can get for your community in the planning gain - developers contributing towards a new school or improved public transport, affordable housing or open playing space? That's a negotiation to be had locally. But my issue is the lack of enforcement of the Section 106s [the agreements between developers and councils about such "planning gain" provision].
I think it is worth thinking about how we can improve the planning regime in London, and if that means the mayor helping local authorities in relation to assessing the impact of developments and how to negotiate.
My problem is, if you are a big developer, architect, big company, you are used to negotiating all round the country, all round the world. If I'm a councillor who has a full time job, a lot of other things going on, its difficult. It's difficult for council planning officers too.
There is a need for more expertise among politicians and the civil service to deal with the big players. I'm not saying they are naive, but I think we need to raise our game.
Where do you stand on the idea of a Land Value Tax?
I think it's worth looking at. I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand. It would take a very persuasive argument to get any chancellor to agree to it, but the advantage would be that you could take some of the cost out of land in London. The cost of building in London isn't so different from in Newcastle. The bricks cost similar amounts, labour costs similar amounts. It's the price of the land.
Well some argue that you should practically give away public land in return for more homes that are affordable.
Yes, but that's a big discussion, a big argument. I can see why people are talking about it.
What should the relationship between the Mayor and the Met be and what should the mayor be wanting more of from the police?
When I was growing up in Tooting, when a police officer was walking down the road towards you, you'd cross the road. The police were seen as the bad guys. It was just a basic way you felt. I was stopped and searched when I was younger, members of my family have been, friends have been. I've got friends who've been treated poorly by the police.
In the last 10, 12 years, there's been a complete culture change. In my old secondary school, Ernest Bevin, police come round and have lunch with the kids. They are on first name terms. It means that the first time a kid meets a police officer, it's not a stop-and-search. So it's a completely different relationship. And that's because of safer neighbourhood teams.
Whatever you think about Ken's legacy, the best thing him and Ian Blair did was safer neighbourhood teams. It was fantastic. You had one sergeant, two constables and three PCSOs that you knew in the community. And that led to intelligence-led policing. It changed the way the next Sadiq Khan generation thought of the police, because they got to know them. Ten, 20 years ago, most police officers in London were from up north. They'd never mixed in a diverse community.
My worry about the new model of policing is that you're back to the Flying Squad approach, where you've got people rushing around in cars and don't know their community. The public has no relationship with them and they are not policed by consent. So I'm worried about intelligence drying up, I worry about public confidence going down.
I went to [high profile black officer] Superintendent Leroy Logan's retirement party, and I spoke at it. When Leroy joined the police force it was a month after his dad had been beaten up by police, right? And all Leroy's mates – all his black mates – stopped talking to him, saying what the hell are you doing? So there's been huge progress since Leroy joined the police service. But, actually, not enough.
Boris's policing deputy, Stephen Greenhalgh, isn't the sort of person who gives me much confidence that he gets policing and the challenge it faces in different parts of London. Unless the public have got confidence in the police, they're not going to come forward and report crime.
But criminologists who spoke to the London Assembly pointed out that where confidence needs to be built is among people in high crime areas who want to be sure that information they give to the police is handled with care and action taken on the strength of it. It wasn't just about "more bobbies on the beat".
That's my party conference speech you've just articulated. It's not right that you can report a crime and have no idea what happens to that report, or that you can give evidence at a trail and have no idea what happens. That's not acceptable. We need to have a criminal justice system that thinks about the citizen, the victim and the witness. And that means that when you make a complaint to the police you are treated civilly and well and told what happens next.
With IT now, it's possible to give you a reference number so you can map if somebody's been arrested, their first appearance, what happened, what their sentence was if they were convicted and when they were released – that can give you confidence. Open justice must also mean you knowing what happened as a consequence of you reporting a crime.
Lots of people now aren't bothering to go to the police. With police stations closing down and some open only three hours a week and people having to go to McDonalds to report a crime, it's becoming more and more difficult to find a place to have private time with the police. There is a school of thought, if you speak to Stephen Greenhalgh and Boris Johnson, they'll say people are doing it by IT or by phone…
But that's true, isn't it?
But if you've been a victim of hate crime or domestic violence or you have a dodgy neighbour and you want to report the crack house four doors down you want to speak to a human being. If English isn't your first language, you want to speak to somebody. That human relationship is very, very important. That's why the bobby on the beat is so important.
If you report a crime by phone, people will come round to your home to talk to you.
Eventually. The target is within 24 hours. But do you want the police coming to your home? I remember when I was growing up, the idea of police officers coming to your house was, you know, wo-ah! You wouldn't want the neighbours knowing that.
I think, after [Stephen] Lawrence, after [Ian] Tomlinson, the days where police were shown too much deference by politicians have gone. But, that being said, they do do a very difficult job. Being a police officer, you know, we don't often give them the respect they deserve.
You're inevitably being mentioned as a possible Labour mayoral candidate for 2016 Does the job appeal?.
To paraphrase Boris, if the ball came loose at the edge of the box and I thought I had the best chance of scoring a goal I'd probably shoot. Listen, London's made me the man I am and it's been home to my family. My parents emigrated here, they loved it. My father passed away ten years ago last week. He'd have been proud that his adopted home had voted for his son to be Tooting's MP. The fact that you're even in a position to ask me that question is a tribute to London. And it is flattering.
I've been looking at your 2008 Fabian Society pamphlet on being a Muslim and being British. You've supported gay marriage and got some stick for that. You look to be the personification of a liberal, progressive Muslim Londoner and citizen. Do you think there should there be more of you?
The thing about London in particular is we all have multiple identities. One of the things I've deliberately sought to do, whether as a lawyer or a politician, is not to talk about suffering racism or Islamophobia, because my worry always is that I may put off somebody else from coming forward. What I try to do is get people involved in mainstream politics. I want an arms race where the Tories, the Lib Dems and Labour argue and compete over recruiting more Asians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews, women, disabled people, everyone.
But the interesting thing about London is this. I've got cousins in Pakistan and other Muslim majority countries and I've probably got more rights than any of them have. And I've probably got more of a chance of fulfilling my potential here in London, as do my daughters. I'm doing this Future Candidates programme, trying to encourage more minorities to come forward. It's great that Tulip Saddiq was selected as our candidate in Hampstead and Kilburn. We want more.
One of the biggest contests for Labour in next year's borough elections is for mayor of Tower Hamlets, where the politics is incredibly fraught and a complete snake pit as you know.
Very diplomatically put.
How can your candidate John Biggs win?
The main thing with John is that he's an old-fashioned politician. He goes to the coal face.
Why do you think Lutfur Rahman [who ran as an independent after Labour's national executive dropped him as the party's candidate] won so convincingly in 2010?
I didn't campaign during that election that much, I was campaigning elsewhere. But I think to play the game where you say the people got it wrong is a mistake. The people of Tower Hamlets chose who they thought was the best candidate for the job.
Why did they think he was the best man?
Local boy, local councillor…
So was his Labour opponent.
Well, the Labour Party's selection in that year was not our finest hour. Tower Hamlets has got its own unique eco-system.
Yes, but it does crystalise some of those issues about Muslim identity.
Well, I think it's a mistake to ghettoize politics. Look at Rushanara Ali [MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, one of the two parliamentary constituencies in Tower Hamlets]. She was born in Tower Hamlets, went to Oxford, came back, is a woman - a good example of actually cutting through some of the issues and being bigger than one identity.
I think the challenge for Labour is to reconnect there. John Biggs won the candidate selection contest fair and square, he's been there for ever, he knows the community very well. What he needs to do is knock on every single door, rather than rely on a community elder to say I can deliver votes for you. Or go to the mosque and get a few imams to back him.
But Lutfur Rahman was able to speak to the voters in a way that the Labour candidate and the Labour campaign could not. Why?
As did George Galloway when he won Bethnal Green. My criticism of some British Muslims is that if you say we'll have a public meeting tomorrow on Kashmir or Sylhet you'll get 3,000 people turning up. If you have one about how poor our local schools are or how poor our housing is you get three people and a dog. That, so me, is a problem.
If you speak to Tariq Ramadan [professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University] he will say that to be a global citizen you've got to be a good local citizen. That's one of the things that is forgotten about the theology of Islam – you've got to be active locally. There was a great John F Kennedy speech. He went to a Catholic church – remember, he was the first ever president of Catholic faith – and he said, look, if you're going to vote for me because I'm Catholic, don't, because I don't want your vote. I want you to vote for me because I'm the best candidate for this job.
If you'd spoken to the people of Bethnal Green and Bow five years after George Galloway became their MP and compared it with what they'd said at the end of the previous eight years when Oona King had been their MP, you'd find there were thousands more people who had been given help with decent housing by Oona. The question we've got to ask on the [Tower Hamlets] mayoral election is, what has the current Mayor of Tower Hamlets done for the people of Tower Hamlets? And compare that with the offer John Biggs is making to them.
So whether it's Lutfur, whether it's Johnny Biggs, Sadiq Khan or whoever, we need to go to our communities and say, look, don't vote for me because I'm a Muslim or because I'm from Pakistan or whatever the case may be. You've got to say vote for me because I've got the values, the ideas, the best policies to solve the problems in our community.
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