Sadiq Khan fears a second term in the White House for Donald Trump could lead to a rise in abuse towards him and his family.
In a candid interview with the New Statesman magazine, the London mayor recalled that “the last time we had a Trump presidency, as a matter of public record, there was a massive increase in hate crime towards me”.
He added: “I worry about what a second Trump presidency would mean for me and my family, but I’m not going to allow these people to cower me. It makes me even more determined to do my job.”
The magazine reports that Mr Khan is the most heavily guarded person in the UK after the King and the Prime Minister, with 15 armed police officers routinely on alert.
A City Hall analysis revealed last year that in 2016 and 2017, the mayor received more online racist abuse from America than he did from the UK. Across the world, well over 300,000 racist messages mentioning Mr Khan have been sent since 2016, the data showed.
A significant proportion of that abuse came after Mr Trump wrote on X, formerly Twitter, following the 2017 London Bridge terror attack: “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”
The quote cited by Mr Trump was taken out of context, as the mayor had told Londoners there was no reason to be alarmed about the increased police presence on the streets after the attack.
In 2019, the then-President wrote to his millions of social media followers that Mr Khan “is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me”.
He added: "Kahn [sic] reminds me very much of our very dumb and incompetent Mayor of NYC, de Blasio, who has also done a terrible job - only half his height.”
While the PM Sir Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy have sought in recent weeks to take a neutral line on questions over the upcoming US election, Mr Khan said it was “obvious” where his own support lay.
“I’m a member of the Labour Party – we’re a social democratic party,” he said. “I want the Democrats to win.”
He added: “It’s no secret many Labour Party members go and volunteer for the Democrats during presidential elections. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Many of my staffers helped all three: Obama, Clinton and Biden.”
The mayor also praised the Democrats’ current crop of candidates, saying: “I’ve been so impressed with Tim Walz. It just shows the judgement that Kamala Harris has in relation to her choice for vice-president. Compare and contrast that with the choice made by the other guy, in JD Vance.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Mr Khan said that he “welcomed” the Government’s new housing targets for London, which although lower than before, are still set at more than double the number of new homes created in London in 2022/23.
In a recent statement, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner warned that “recent delivery in London has fallen well short of what is needed”, but the mayor pointed to wider challenges in the sector such as a lack of construction labour and Government investment.
He also placed some of the blame on the capital’s borough councils, saying: “Some local authorities in London have been brilliant, some less good. I’ve said to them: if you’re not willing to give permission to a sensible housing development then I’ll take it over.”
