First Muslim woman elected to Greater London Assembly

"Proud to elected on the special night of Laylat ul Qadr as one of the first female Muslim London Assembly members alongside with @LabourMarina & @SakinaZS," Bokhari, a Merton councellor who represents the Liberal Democrats, tweeted.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey congratulated Bokhari on her appoinment.

"Proud to see Hina Bokhari elected as a member of the Greater London Assembly today. Hina is the first Muslim woman to be elected to GLA," he tweeted.

The assembly is an elected body of 25 members that audits the work and activites of the mayor. It is also responsible for amending the annual budget for Greater London and rejecting or accepting projects in the city. 

In 2016, Sadiq Khan of the Labour Party became London's first Muslim and first ever ethnic minority mayor. He was re-elected by a landslide on Saturday.

In an interview the week before, when her win seemed almost certain, 45-year-old Bokhari told The Independent that becoming the first Muslim woman in the Greater London Assembly would be "a wonderful thing" but added that it was "also incredibly sad and shocking" that this had only been acheived in 2021.

“When I was first elected in 2018 as the first Muslim woman councillor in Merton, I thought politics was more diverse than it is – you hear about these amazing brown, black, ethnic minority women in politics but they’re the minority.

“There really isn’t enough and the fact that I am the first really highlights that,” she said.

London mayor Sadiq Khan has prected that the UK will have a Muslim prime minister "in the not-too-distant future" but insists it will not be him.

"As long as Londoners continue to trust me to be their mayor, I'm currently in this job," he told AFP.