Death threats see London mayor Sadiq Khan given 24-hour police protection

Former MP says campaign of abuse has intensified after EU referendum ‘allowed things to come to the surface’

London mayor Sadiq Khan has round-the-clock police protection after receiving a deluge of death threats.

The measure was taken after City Hall referred 17 cases to the police in a three-month period last year; 237 threats were made on social media.

The 48-year-old Labour politician, who was MP for Tooting before succeeding Boris Johnson as London mayor, revealed that the “name-calling, trolling and threats to terrorism” had intensified since the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Mr Khan, a practising Muslim, told The Times magazine: “It can’t be right that one of the consequences of me being the mayor of London and a Muslim in public life is that I have police protection.

“The referendum campaign allowed things to come to the surface and normalised things that should not be normalised.”

Mr Khan said that due to a nationwide rise in racial and religious attacks, he feared the name-calling could lead to “the situation where Jo Cox is murdered or a terrorist can come to London and try to divide communities”.

The mayor previously told The Independent he was concerned that Brexit would cause a spike in hate crime mirroring that following the 2016 EU referendum.

He has been personally targeted by right-wing activists and anti-Islam groups including the UK “yellow vests” and Britain First, who hold him responsible for rising violent crime and other grievances.

Extremists frequently post doctored images of Mr Khan and racist memes on social media, while the Finsbury Park terrorist attacked him in a suicide note written before he ploughed a van into Muslims in 2017.

Darren Osborne told his trial that it would have been like “winning the lottery” to murder Mr Khan, if he had been able to reach the protest that was his original target.

Earlier this year, Mr Khan told The Independent the vitriol came from “a small minority of people who use social media to articulate their hatred towards me” and added: “The key thing is to not allow haters to succeed by letting it affect you. It’s distressing for friends and family but there are more of those that are decent than are horrible and nasty.”

In September, a balloon depicting Mr Khan was flown above parliament, after being crowdfunded by people angered by a previous stunt targeting Donald Trump during the US president’s visit.

Criticism from right-wing pundits appears to have filtered up to the White House, with Mr Trump accusing Mr Khan of doing a “very bad job” on crime and terrorism and attacking him on Twitter in the aftermath of the London Bridge attack.

Mr Khan previously demanded action from social media firms to tackle hate speech, warning that the level of abuse he regularly received could deter other people from minority backgrounds from entering politics.

After reading out tweets including death threats and racist abuse in March 2018, he said: “I could go on and on, but I won’t. I don’t read these out to be portrayed as a victim or to ask for sympathy.

“But ask yourself this – what happens when young boys and girls from minority backgrounds see this kind of thing on their timelines – or experience it themselves?”

During the 2016 mayoral elections, Mr Khan’s rival Zac Goldsmith was widely condemned following his attempt to secure a victory by waging a campaign accused of exploiting anti-Muslim prejudices.

Mr Khan, who was born in south London to a British Pakistani family, received a record number of votes to become London mayor and said his election showed that “London has chosen hope over fear, and unity over division”.