In London's mayoral race, candidate rejects 'extremism' barb

The contrast between Sadiq Khan of the Labour Party and Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith is resonant in a booming city where rocketing rents and property prices are squeezing out the middle class and increasing extremes of poverty and wealth.

Goldsmith has used words such as "radical" and "dangerous" to describe Khan, and said in a campaign speech that his opponent had given "platforms, oxygen and even cover — over and over again — to those who seek to do our police and capital harm."

Prime Minister David Cameron took up the criticism, accusing Khan of appearing "again and again" on platforms alongside Sulaiman Ghani, an imam Cameron called an Islamic extremist.

Goldsmith has been accused of heightening tensions in a city where authorities have foiled several Islamic extremist terrorist plots since suicide bombers killed 52 people on the London transit system in July 2005.

Tony Travers, a local government expert at the London School of Economics, said "British politics is used to robust exchanges and accusations," but Goldsmith's tactics have left some people feeling uneasy.

In the final week before the vote, Khan's campaign has been tinged by claims Labour has a problem with anti-Semitism, inflamed when a former London mayor, Ken Livingstone, claimed that Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism before he came to power.

He has Jewish ancestors who fled fascism in Europe, and his financier father James Goldsmith was both a French member of the European Parliament and an anti-EU British politician.

Despite their differences, the two candidates agree on the need to tackle the cost of housing and on the other major challenges facing the city: crime and terrorism, overburdened transport and persistent air pollution.