Labour Party candidate for Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan
Labour Party candidate for Mayor of London, Sadiq KhanReuters

The UK Labour Party's candidate for Mayor of London pushed for sanctions against the State of Israel in the past, it has been revealed.

Sadiq Khan, a Labour MP who has been actively courting London's Jewish community ahead of the elections in May of this year, has repeatedly claimed during the campaign that he has always opposed boycotting the Jewish state.

But the UK's Jewish Chronicle revealed on Monday emails it said it received from one of Khan's top parliamentary aides to a meeting of the far-left Stop the War Coalition in February 2009, outlining how Khan lobbied officials to boycott Israel.

It claimed Khan had "regularly" been in contact with then Foreign Secretary David Miliband and other top officials.

The aide explicitly told how Khan "wrote to David Miliband… asking that sanctions be brought against Israel."

Addressing Stop the War - which is virulently anti-Israel - he vowed on behalf of the MP that "Sadiq's commitment to the situation in Palestine is longstanding and will, I can assure you, continue into the future."

"A fortnight ago Sadiq was a principal speaker at the launch of the Labour Friends of Palestine group, which has been set up to help to ensure the Palestinian voice is represented amongst MPs and the Labour party," he added.

The revelations will add to Khan's woes, coming on the heals of embarrassing revelations that another of his aides - Shueb Salar - posted a series of sexist, racist and homophobic posts on Twitter. Salar, who has since quit following the embarrassing expose, also claimed that the brutal murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by Muslim terrorists had been faked.