London has come a long way at a time when Britain's suffering - and I know what the city needs next

Above all else, I have loudly and proudly stood up for London’s values as mayor, defending our diversity and respect for one another in the face of an increasingly divided and intolerant world

‘We are fixing the mess we inherited from Boris Johnson at City Hall and laying the foundations to build a better city’ (AFP/Getty)

Two years ago last May Londoners chose unity over division by electing me as mayor – a working-class boy from south London – in the face of a nasty and divisive Conservative campaign.

The last two years have been tough for London. We’ve had five terrorist attacks on our city, the Sandilands tram crash, the shameful tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire, the continuing chaos of Brexit, government austerity ravaging our police force and youth services and a resulting national rise in violent crime.

For many Londoners, the future doesn’t look any easier. Families are struggling to make ends meet. On average, Londoners are still earning nearly 8 per cent less now than they were before the global financial crisis a decade ago. Public services are at breaking point. Our celebrated multiculturalism and diversity is under attack – not just here in London but around the world. And now Theresa May’s chaotic handling of Brexit means jobs and growth are at risk.

I could promise Londoners that I’ll fix all these problems overnight – but it simply wouldn’t be true. There is no silver bullet for many. Some were decades in the making and will take years to fix. Some need extra funding and powers that the Mayor’s office simply doesn’t have. And some will need a new government that genuinely cares and wants to do something about them. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.

But that doesn’t mean there is no hope. We’ve shown that progress, while hard fought, is possible. We are fixing the mess we inherited from Boris Johnson at City Hall and laying the foundations to build a better city.

The job of the mayor of London is to make the small changes that make a real difference to Londoners daily lives – changes that make things just a little bit easier. And that is exactly what I’m doing.

I’ve introduced the unlimited Hopper bus fare – with a staggering 220 million journeys made so far, saving Londoners money on every journey. I’ve frozen TfL fares for four years, saving the average household in the capital £200 by 2020. And under my leadership, the number of days lost to strikes on the London Underground has reduced by 65 per cent compared to my predecessor.

On my watch, City Hall started building more social homes last year than ever before and launched our first ever programme to build 10,000 new council homes. We also reduced rough sleeping by 7 per cent last year after it increased for eight years in a row and doubled under Boris Johnson.

I’ve made a start on tackling London’s dangerously polluted air – investing in cleaner buses, with the Toxicity Charge already making a real difference and the world’s first Ultra-Low Emission Zone on the way next year.

And because we can all see the impact of government cuts to youth services, I’ve created a new £45m fund to create more positive opportunities for young Londoners and to support those at risk of being drawn into criminality to find a better path.

Above all else, I have loudly and proudly stood up for London’s values, defending our diversity and respect for one another in the face of an increasingly divided and intolerant world.

It makes me immensely proud that Labour Party members have again chosen me to be their candidate for the next mayoral election in 2020. Winning that election will not be easy. We’re not only running against the Conservative Party – and we all remember how nasty the campaign was last time – but also against former Conservative chancellor George Osborne, who is now the editor of the Evening Standard. He’s using the pages of his newspaper to try to rewrite history and cover up the massive damage that his cuts as chancellor caused to our city, whether to policing, housing or our public services. We can’t let him get away with it.

We simply must win London again in 2020. We’ve got a lot done over the last two years. But there is so much more left to do over the years ahead and we can only finish the job with a Labour mayor in City Hall once again.

Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London