Adam Bienkov at Politics.co.uk:
The Conservative campaign against Sadiq Khan has increasingly concentrated on associating him with “extremists” in an attempt to scare voters away from electing him as mayor. One of the charges made against Khan is that he was a supporter of Babar Ahmad in his campaign against extradition to the US.
Last week, the home secretary Theresa May told the Conservative spring conference that Khan’s association with Ahmad, who was subsequently convicted of terrorism-related offences in the US, was a “worry” for somebody who could soon be overseeing the Metropolitan Police.
Indeed she did. And during Tuesday evening’s mayoral debate, hosted by City AM at the Institute of Directors, Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith repeated the attack, correctly describing Ahmad’s having eventually been convicted by a US court - for providing “material support” to the Taliban - and adding that Ahmad was supported by Khan (who is his local MP).
It is quite true that Khan campaigned against Ahmad’s extradition. But Khan responded that Goldsmith, a fellow critic of US-UK extradition arrangements, had done the same. Goldsmith replied that whilst he had supported Richmond Park constituents and others (notably Gary McKinnon) in extradition cases, “to suggest that that means that I was campaigning on behalf of Babar Ahmad, who I’d never heard of until quite recently, I think is an extraordinary thing to say.”
The trouble is that, as Adam Bienkov shows, Goldsmith clearly had heard of Ahmad before. Four years ago, he spoke up for him at a meeting held in parliament. Watch this clip from 1.15 minutes in:
That’s right. Goldsmith says:
Babar Ahmad’s is a story which has caught peoples’ imagination. I’ve been bombarded with letters from my local constituents [about it]. I’ve lost track of how many letters, I’ve had so many, and from other people as well.
What explains Goldsmith’s claim that he’d “never heard of Ahmad until quite recently.”? Khan tartly put it down to “selective amnesia.” Maybe Goldsmith really had forgotten. Whatever the reason, he has plainly expressed sympathy for Ahmad in the past but is now prepared to criticise Khan for having done the same.
The exchange about Ahmad followed a pretty fierce one right at the start of the City AM debate: Khan expressed his disappointment at what he considers Goldsmith’s negative campaigning; Goldsmith responded with a list of decisions Khan had made in the past, including about cases he’d taken as a civil rights lawyer, which he contended call Khan’s judgment into question.
He also took exception to Khan and his campaign suggesting that he’s been craftily stirring anti-Muslim sentiment (including by means of those leaflets and letters to non-Muslim Asian Londoners). Goldsmith said that no one was “suggesting that you, Sadiq, have extreme views,” but that it was not Islamophobic to question choices he’d made in the past.
Earlier in the day, re-launching his “action plan for Greater London” in suburban Southfields, Goldsmith had used very aggressive language to make this point, accusing Khan of “giving platforms, oxygen and even cover to those who seek to do our police and capital harm.” The Khan campaign’s response to this type of attack is now very familiar - that it’s the desperate, divisive tactic of a Tory rival being told what to do by Lynton Crosby’s crew and with no positive vision for London.
Of course, Khan is a canny strategist too: his stress on the negative tactics of Goldsmith will be informed by his own electoral calculations. But the revelation that Goldsmith too supported Babar Ahmad won’t make it any easier for the Tory to get the better of him on the “judgment” theme.
