Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Who is – and isn’t – welcome in Sadiq Khan’s London?

(Getty images)

Right-wing Frenchman Eric Zemmour, who is expected to run for the presidency of his country next year, has been designated persona non grata in London by the city’s mayor. 

‘Nobody who wants to divide our communities or incites hatred against people because of the colour of their skin or the god they worship is welcome in our city,’ said Sadiq Khan in response to a question about Zemmour’s presence in the capital.

A noble declaration, one with which few would disagree, but rather incongruous coming from the mouth of Khan. For this is the man who waxed lyrical about Jeremy Corbyn at the Labour party conference in 2017. 

A legacy of Corbyn’s four-and-a-half-years in charge of Sadiq Khan’s beloved Labour is the anti-Semitism that flourishes in London

‘We made huge progress in the general election and the credit for that goes to one person – the leader of our party – Jeremy Corbyn,’ he gushed.

Khan predicted that Labour would win elections; under Jeremy, he said, ‘we can build a fairer Britain. A more prosperous Britain. A safer Britain.’

Corbyn didn’t, of course, win the 2019 election and a year after Labour’s humiliating defeat a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission disclosed that far from building a fairer Britain, Labour under Corbyn was responsible for ‘unlawful’ acts of harassment and discrimination. In a statement the commission reported that a culture was allowed to flourish within the party ‘which, at best, did not do enough to prevent anti-Semitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it.’

A legacy of Corbyn’s four-and-a-half-years in charge of Sadiq Khan’s beloved Labour is the anti-Semitism that flourishes in London, as the Israeli ambassador to Britain discovered earlier this month as she left an event at the LSE.

London has this century hosted many people who have made it their life’s work to divide communities and incited hatred, and curiously Sadiq Khan has often had associations with them.

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