London’s Mayor Isn’t Afraid of ISIS—or Brexit

When Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, Sadiq Khan, in only the second month of his tenure as mayor of London, was the first to reassure immigrants that they were still a vital part of the city they helped create. In the year since, he’s been an outspoken champion for a multicultural, outward-looking U.K. “London has a unique selling point: We’re the cultural capital of the U.K., we’re the political capital, we’re the financial capital, so if you come here, it’s all in one place,” he says. “Frankfurt, Paris, Rome, Dublin, they’ve each got some wonderful things in each of their cities, but they’re not the complete package.”

The son of Pakistani immigrants who grew up in a housing project in south London, Khan presents himself as the embodiment of a global city. Having traveled the path to the top via law school, human-rights advocacy, and the House of Commons, he now must bridge the growing divide between the wealth of the City’s financial sector and the poverty of places such as Grenfell Tower, the site of the fire that killed about 80 people—mostly immigrants—in June.