Sadiq Khan says having a suspected heart attack on stage taught him that “time is finite, every minute, every hour” and inspired him to fight for clean air.
The Mayor of London was rushed to hospital after chest pains left him “barely conscious” during a warm-up speech at the COP26 climate summit.
Now the dad of two is more determined than ever to act on the environment – not least because of his kids.
Speaking candidly about the collapse, he says: “If anything, the heart attack has meant accelerating action because who knows how long I’ll be the mayor for, who knows how long I’ll be around for? And I have children. Speaking not just as the mayor but as a dad, I want to make sure my kids have it better than me.”
The dramatic ordeal in Glasgow in 2021 is told in full in Mr Khan’s new book Breathe: Tackling the Climate Emergency.
Mr Khan, 52, who has daughters Anisah and Ammarah with wife Saadiya, tells how he felt completely healthy until he took to the stage for a warm-up event.
He recalls: “Everything went fuzzy. I was panicking. I seemed to be having a heart attack.”
Carried off stage, Mr Khan collapsed in a chair, barely conscious, shirt drenched with sweat, feeling as if he was “on fire ”. Medical adviser Tom Coffey insisted he go to hospital – a decision that might have saved his life.
The mayor says: “Tom told me that he’d seen this happen to a lot of men: after an incident of this kind, they’d gone to bed and had never woken up.”
The terrifying ordeal made Mr Khan re-evaluate his life and prioritise his physical health.
He says: “I had loads of tests to make sure there weren’t any issues that would cause future problems, like blocked arteries.
“There are many people who are healthy and fit who can have heart attacks but the main thing is to take care of my mental and physical fitness.”
The working-class son of a bus driver father and seamstress mother,
Mr Khan has won two terms as the capital’s mayor since 2016 and will bid to win a historic third as Labour ’s candidate in 2024.
In his book he lays bare his mission to make London a cleaner, safer city.
Since taking up the post, Mr Khan has declared a climate emergency, introduced the world’s first Ultra-Low Emission Zone and turned London into the first ever “National Park City”.
He adds: “In just two years we managed to reduce the toxicity in a centralised city by almost 50%.”
His part-personal, part-political book was inspired by Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, nine, of South East London, the first person in the world with air pollution cited as a cause of death after a fatal asthma attack in 2013.
Mr Khan, who has become friends with Ella’s mum Rosamund, calls the tragedy a “wake-up moment for everybody”.
He says: “I’m a father of two daughters who were a similar age. We lived in South London. It could have been us.”
He was diagnosed with adult-onset asthma aged 42 – which he attributes to air pollution.
“In London, 500,000 people have respiratory issues like asthma – there’s millions around the country – but since we introduced our policies the number of children admitted into hospital with asthma has reduced by a third. I want to give people hope.”
Ms Adoo-Kissi-Debrah is fighting for Ella’s Law, which would enshrine the right to clean air in UK law. She says she has been met with silence by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
And despite their friendship, she is willing to hold Mr Khan to account “if he’s not delivering”.
But Mr Khan, who has to have regular tests to check his cardiac health, says he is up to the task.
He adds: “Clean air is not a privilege, it’s a human right and everyone deserves to breathe in clean air.”
