Seven things you should know about Sadiq Khan

Sadiq Khan is no ordinary politician. Here are seven things you should know about the Mayor of London ahead of his eagerly awaited appearance as the guest speaker at the IoD Annual Dinner 2016...

  1. He received a special mention from the IoD’s director general, Simon Walker, at this year’s Annual Convention. After meeting the Mayor of London, Walker said, “Sadiq Khan knows where the money comes from, he understands that making it easy for companies to do business, bring in global talent and strengthen infrastructure ultimately benefits everybody, and his stand-out feature is that he actually got elected with significant business support.”
  2. Back in January of this year, Khan told the Financial Times that he wanted to be the “most business-friendly mayor of all-time”, adding that, “if business does well, London does well.”
  3. Last month, Khan travelled to the US with a delegation of London’s top tech start-ups on a mission to drum up post-Brexit business. A total of 23 SMEs pitched to investors in New York and Chicago. The visit formed part of Khan’s International Business Programme, which was set up to drive global growth for 800 London SMEs over the next three years.
  4. Khan’s resounding victory in the 2016 election, where he polled 56.9 percent in the second round vote, gave him the largest personal mandate of any politician in the history of the UK. The result also meant Khan became the first Muslim to be a Mayor of a European capital city.
  5. As a 15-year-old he had an unsuccessful trial to play cricket for Surrey. He also spent his part of his youth boxing at the Earlsfield Amateur Club in Wandsworth. “The first thing you learn in boxing is defence. We all boxed [in my family] and that gives you confidence if you get into bother on the street.” He added that, “Being called the ‘P’ word was common. Knowing how to take a punch was essential.”
  6. Khan puts his work ethic down to the fact his father was a bus driver who would ‘try to do any available overtime shift’ and the fact that his mum had to raise him as well as his six brothers and a sister. One of his older brothers, Sid, coached Joe Joyce to a silver medal in the Super Heavyweight category at this year’s Rio Olympics.
  7. He performed a number of stand-up comedy routines as part of a series of events called ‘Stand Up for Labour’ and once told the London Evening Standard “The joke is that if Chuka Umunna and I went out, we’d be Chuka Khan.” Don’t give up the day job, Sadiq…

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