Sadiq Khan calls Donald Trump a poster boy for the far-right

The London Mayor said Trump was amplifying racists around the world when he retweeted a far-right attack on him this weekend.

Sadiq Khan has accused Donald Trump of being a ‘poster boy for racists’ after he retweeted a post that referred to the capital city as ‘Khan’s Londonistan’.

The London mayor slammed the US president for ‘amplifying the tweets of a far-right activist’ by referencing the post by Katie Hopkins.

Alongside the retweet, Mr Trump called Mr Khan a ‘disaster’ on Twitter and said he was a ‘national disgrace who is destroying the city of London’.

The original post by Hopkins using the word ‘Londonistan’ also called the capital ‘Stab-City’ and was posted in reference to the weekend’s violence that saw four people killed.

The term Londonistan has been widely condemned for being a highly racialised term that was used against Mr Khan because of his Pakistani and Muslim heritage.

Speaking today, the mayor said: ‘It’s for Donald Trump to explain his tweets, not for me, but it’s remarkable that you’ve got the president of the USA amplifying the tweets of a far-right activist, amplifying a racist tweet.

‘That’s one of my concerns about Donald Trump – he’s now seen as a poster boy for racists around the world, whether you’re a racist in this country, whether you’re a racist in Hungary, a racist in Italy, or a racist in France.

‘He’s now a poster boy for the far-right movement and that should cause us huge concern.’

Mr Khan added: ‘It’s for Donald Trump to answer the question why he’s obsessed with me, it’s for Donald Trump to answer the question why he amplifies the tweets of far-right activists, why he amplifies racist tweets.

‘I’m quite clear, there are many cities across this country facing a huge issue of the increase in violent crime, they’ve been doing so since 2014.

‘There are many good leaders in America facing massive increases in violent crime, they have my support to make sure we learn lessons from each other and that we work together to grapple the issue of violent crime taking place in many cities across the Western world.’

After Trump’s posts online, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said it was ‘absolutely awful’ the US president was using the ‘tragedy of people being murdered to attack the mayor’.

But the government was accused of promoting a ‘shameful silence’ on the incident when no Tory MPs spoke against the president’s remarks.

Labour MP Naz Shah said not speaking out allowed ‘hatred and bigoted views to become legitimised’.

Today, the Tory leadership hopefuls were probed on their opinions of the Twitter attack at a private hustings in Westminster.

Dominic Raab condemned the president’s tweet and said: ‘I’m proud to have a Muslim mayor of London and a Muslim Home Secretary.

‘I’ve lived in London and I’m proud that it’s a melting pot.’

But Jeremy Hunt has been condemned for saying he ‘150%’ agreed with Trump’s ‘sentiment’.

The Muslim Council of Britain said: ‘It is further proof that Islamophobia is given a free pass at the highest echelons of the Conservative Party.’