Sadiq Khan has hit back at Donald Trump with a blistering 14-word dismissal, branding the US President “racist, sexist, misogynistic” and “Islamophobic” following Trump’s extraordinary claim that London wants to impose Sharia law.
The London Mayor said he was “living rent free” in Trump’s head after the President used his keynote United Nations speech on Tuesday to launch a fresh attack on Khan, calling him a “terrible, terrible mayor” who had fundamentally changed Britain’s capital.
Speaking to world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York, Trump declared: “I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it’s been changed, it’s been so changed. Now they want to go to Sharia law. But you are in a different country, you can’t do that.”
The inflammatory remarks, made without evidence, immediately drew fierce condemnation from British politicians and reignited the long-running feud between Trump and London’s first Muslim mayor.
A spokesperson for Khan initially responded with cutting brevity, stating: “We are not going to dignify his appalling and bigoted comments with a response.” The statement added that London remains “the greatest city in the world, safer than major US cities” and welcomed “the record number of US citizens moving here.”
But speaking to ITV News London on Wednesday, Khan went further, saying: “People will be wondering what it is about this Muslim mayor who leads a liberal, multicultural, successful city, that means I seem to be living rent free inside Donald Trump’s head.
I think I’ve got squatters rights, the amount of time I spend in Donald Trump’s head,” the Mayor added with characteristic wit, before turning more serious. Asked directly if he believed Trump was Islamophobic, Khan responded: “I think when somebody behaves a certain way, when somebody says certain things, when somebody shows you who they are, believe it.”
Trump’s baseless claims about Sharia law sparked immediate pushback from across the political spectrum. Health Secretary Wes Streeting took to social media platform X to defend Khan, writing: “Sadiq Khan is not trying to impose Sharia Law on London. This is a Mayor who marches with Pride, who stands up for difference of background and opinion, who’s focused on improving our transport, our air, our streets, our safety, our choices and chances.”
Labour MP Uma Kumaran told LBC the comments were “appalling” and “an outright lie,” adding: “It’s actually really shocking that the pulpit of the United Nations has been used and abused in this way by the President of the United States to spread such lies about the Mayor of London.”
The attack formed part of Trump’s broader assault on European leadership during his hour-long UN address, in which he told delegates: “Your countries are going to hell” over immigration policies. He claimed Europe had been “invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody’s ever seen before” and warned that “both the immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe if something is not done immediately.
Trump’s comments about Khan echo far-right conspiracy theories that have circulated online for years, falsely linking the Mayor to Islamic fundamentalism. There is no evidence that Khan has ever advocated for London to adopt Sharia law, the religious legal system used in some Muslim-majority countries.
While Sharia councils do exist in England, they operate as voluntary arbitration bodies for civil matters within Muslim communities and have no legal jurisdiction over British law. They cannot override national legislation and primarily provide guidance on issues such as religious divorce.
The latest confrontation marks a significant escalation in the bitter feud between Trump and Khan that has raged for nearly a decade. Their animosity dates back to 2015 when Khan, then a mayoral candidate, condemned Trump’s call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” following a terrorist attack in California.
Since then, the two have engaged in increasingly personal attacks. Trump has previously called Khan a “stone cold loser” who is “very dumb” and claimed he was “among the worst mayors in the world.” During his state visit to Britain last week, Trump even claimed he had requested Khan be excluded from official events, including the state banquet hosted by King Charles at Windsor Castle.
Khan has consistently refused to be cowed by Trump’s attacks. In 2018, he permitted anti-Trump protesters to fly a giant balloon depicting the President as an angry baby in a nappy over Parliament Square during Trump’s visit to London. The Mayor has previously suggested Trump’s targeting of him was motivated by his ethnicity and Muslim faith, telling a podcast before Trump’s re-election: “If I wasn’t this colour skin, if I wasn’t a practising Muslim, he wouldn’t have come for me.”
Trump’s UN speech also saw him attack Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s energy policies, claiming the UK had “given up their powerful edge” by heavily taxing North Sea oil exploration. Aberdeen was the oil capital of Europe and there’s tremendous oil that hasn’t been found in the North Sea – tremendous oil,” Trump declared, despite having praised Starmer during last week’s state visit as someone he “respects and likes a lot.
The President’s combative address included telling European leaders their immigration policies would lead to the continent’s destruction and dismissing climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He also claimed to have ended “seven wars” in his first seven months back in office and complained about receiving “a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter” from the UN.
Khan’s response highlighted his record as a three-time elected mayor, noting: “I’m really proud of the progress we’re making in this great city. We are the greatest city in the world, one of the reasons, I suspect, why record numbers of Americans are coming to live in London.”
The Mayor has previously branded Trump’s policies as “sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist,” arguing that friends and allies should “call out” such views. In May, before Trump’s re-election, Khan told Politico: “If my best mate was a racist, or a sexist or a homophobe, I’d call him out, and I’d explain to him why those views are wrong.”
Political analysts suggest Trump’s continued attacks on Khan reflect both personal animosity and a broader strategy of appealing to his base through inflammatory rhetoric about immigration and Islam. The feud has become emblematic of deeper tensions between Trump’s populist nationalism and the multicultural values Khan champions in London.
As the war of words continues, Khan appears determined not to be intimidated. Posting on X following Trump’s latest attack, the Mayor shared a video of London’s skyline with the caption “Ignore the haters. London is the 🐐” – using the emoji for “Greatest Of All Time.”
The diplomatic implications of Trump’s attack remain unclear, though it marks a stark departure from the conciliatory tone he struck during last week’s state visit. The special relationship between Britain and America now faces renewed strain as Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric threatens to overshadow substantive policy discussions between the two nations.
For Khan, the attacks have paradoxically raised his international profile as a defender of liberal, multicultural values against Trump’s brand of populist nationalism. As he noted with evident satisfaction: “I’ve won three [elections]. How many has he won?”
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