Labour's Sadiq Khan has made history by becoming the first Muslim to be elected Mayor of London. The Tooting MP, the son of a bus driver from Pakistan, succeeds the bombastic Boris Johnson in City Hall after defeating Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith.

"This election was not without controversy and London today has chosen hope over fear, unity over division. I hope that we will never be offered such a stark choice again," Khan said in his victory speech.

His campaign concentrated heavily on transport and housing, with the Labour politician's flagship pledge involving freezing London Underground and bus fares until 2020. The promise came under scrutiny after Transport for London (TfL) said the measure would cost £1.9bn ($2.7bn), rather than Khan's estimate of £450m over the four years.

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The former human rights lawyer also promised to address the capital's lack of affordable housing by using public land "creatively to generate future income" as well as exploring incentives for businesses to provide investment in new homes for their workforces.

London Labour MP David Lammy, who ran against Khan for the party's Mayoral nomination, described Khan's victory as "extraordinary".

"He's run a very effective campaign, it's been on the issues and the big issue that Londoners are talking about is housing and he has consistently come back to that time and time again," he told IBTimes UK.

"It's an extraordinary moment also because of course he has got a mandate from millions of Londoners.

"He's reminded people time and time again that he's a son of immgrants, his dad was a bus driver, he grew up on a council estate. It has really resonated. When you look at the results across London, he's outperforming Ken Livingstone in terms of personal vote when Ken was at his best.

"It's a huge personal mandate for Sadiq Khan and Labour members. This is a profound moment for Londoners."

Labour last won the Mayor of London election in 2004 with Livingstone. The left-winger was suspended by the party after claiming Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was a Zionist, with just days to go before the 5 May vote. But Khan was quick to condemn and distance himself from the former Mayor of London.

His main rival, Goldsmith, has been accused of running a "dog-whistling" campaign as the Conservatives branded Khan "radical" and questioned his judgement for sharing speaking platforms with alleged extremists. But the top Tory defended the campaign to IBTimes UK.

"I think it's absurd to pretend that asking questions about someone's links to people who want to do harm to this city are out of bounds. That just doesn't make sense to me at all, it doesn't make sense to anyone," Goldsmith argued.

Professor Tony Travers, a local government expert at the London School of Economics, told IBTimes UK that he thought it was "clearly significant" for London to elect its first Muslim mayor.

"It will be seen as significant outside Britain, it will be seen as evidence of London's vast broadly tolerant nature and it will be a correct assumption," he said.

"Khan, intriguingly, probably had more businesses supporting him than Zac Goldsmith did, particularly because of his stance on Europe, which many of the bigger businesses in the city were not enthusiastic about. In that sense, on balance, business probably preferred the Labour candidate, which is in a very Alice and Wonderland way the sign of the times."

The victory will be a relief for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has kept his distance from his candidate's campaign. The party has been pushed into third at the Holyrood elections, lost councils seats across England and Wales and kept its majority of Welsh Assembly members.

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