Sadiq Khan is Mayor of London, and he shared a platform with an extremist in the end

With Sadiq Khan's victory so emphatic the message is clear: London is in the grip of terrorist sympathisers

Zac Goldsmith listens at City Hall as Sadiq Khan gives his victory speech, calling for "hope over fear and unity over division" (AP)

He shared a platform with an extremist in the end. As the results were read out there could be no disguising the fact that London’s first Muslim Mayor was standing happily alongside the man who has, over the past few weeks, stampeded over the line of acceptable public discourse. A man who has fought the dirtiest campaign in decades, and right up there with the most unsuccessful too.

The result was overwhelming. 1.3m votes for Sadiq Khan. 900,000 for Zac Goldsmith. ‘The largest popular mandate in British electoral history,’ is a phrase you’ll be hearing a lot of. What it means is that Londoners came out in large numbers and were entirely unambiguous in their choice. From Hackney to Hammersmith, Barnet to Bexley, the terrorist-sympathisers’ grip upon the capital is total.

There’s no point acting surprised. It’s not like you haven’t been warned. Brave Zac Goldsmith’s been telling you for weeks. Sadiq won’t stand up for Hindus. He won’t stand up for Sikhs. If you’re Tamil, he’ll steal your family jewellery. All this was well known, thanks to the brave leafleteering of the once thought moderate face of Conservatism. It weighed not a feather in the balance. In the early evening, even his sister Jemima had disowned him. “Sad that Zac’s campaign did not reflect who I know him to be,” she said. Too late.

“This election was not without controversy,” Khan said in a very short acceptance speech, delivered beyond midnight, the results having been initially expected at five in the afternoon. “And I am so proud that London has today chosen hope over fear, and unity over division.”

While Labour diminished in Wales, subtracted in England and imploded in Scotland, in London it ran away with it.

Khan, it has been pointed out elsewhere, doesn’t lose. When Labour was decimated at the last election, its vote went up in London. Who ran their campaign? Sadiq Khan.

The scale of this victory was large. But so are the challenges. In his speech Khan made Londoners a series of promises. “A decent and affordable home. A decent commute you can afford. Cleaner air. A healthier city. The opportunity for all Londoners to fulfil their potential.”

His new office overlooks the brand new ‘One Tower Bridge’ development, where banners advertise there are a ‘Last Few Apartments Remaining.’ The cheapest is £1.5m, the most expensive £15m. A tenth of it, admittedly, is social housing, but these tenants have been banned from the communal gardens, unless they stump up huge additional fees that they clearly can’t afford.

The rest of the world seemed far more interested that London had elected a Muslim mayor than London was itself. A Pakistani television reporter broadcast live in Urdu as the afternoon sun gave way to evening and eventually to nightfall. You didn't have to listen for long to hear the words ‘bus driver’ or sometimes ‘cabinet minister.’

Sadiq Khan is not a natural attention magnet like his predecessor. He will not preside over a triumph as singular as Ken Livingstone’s successful bid for the Olympic Games, nor we hope, an atrocity as grave as that which followed it the next day.

London has only had two mayors. Both have demonstrated its unrivalled possibilities of City Hall as an alternative power base away from Westminster. Livingstone was an independent when he won in 2000. By 2004 Labour felt they had to invite him back. Boris Johnson has used the job chiefly to position himself for bigger things. For Khan, the timings are intriguing. The 2020 Mayoral election will almost certainly be on the same day as the general election. An unlikely sequence of events would have to unfold for Labour to win in 2020, and simultaneously for Sadiq not to run again for Mayor, and not to win. By 2024 he will have had to have made his ambitions clear.