Sadiq Khan: “aspiration” will be overused in Labour leadership race
Sadiq Khan has criticised the way Labour politicians are looking back on Tony Blair’s time in office with “rose-tinted glasses”, claiming that the party no longer understands aspiration.
The former shadow justice secretary, who resigned after the General Election in order to prepare for his candidacy for London mayor, said that some in his party were looking at the past too favourably.
He said we would have to "wait and see" if the four candidates running for the Labour leadership were strong enough.
In an interview with the Guardian, Khan said:
A word I think you’ll hear overused in the leadership contest is ‘aspiration’. It’s used in a pejorative way to suggest we didn’t understand what it meant. I understand what it means.
It means your dad working all the overtime hours that London Transport will give you, aspiration means your mum, notwithstanding having eight children, works as a seamstress at home as well to make ends meet. Aspiration means, as a 24-year-old trainee solicitor, sleeping on a bunk bed in your mum and dad’s home to save for a deposit. So I get aspiration.
His comments came after leadership hopeful Yvette Cooper criticised colleagues on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, saying some in the party were "swallowing the Tory manifesto".