Sadiq Khan hopes Donald Trump will be ‘different from the last time’ he was in the White House and said he wants to ‘work closely’ with the incoming US President. 

The London Mayor appeared to be in a more conciliatory tone ahead of Mr Trump being sworn in as the President of the United States for a second term later today.

It comes amid the pair’s fiery long-running feud, which has previously seen the US President brand Sir Sadiq a ‘stone cold loser’.

In a furious war of words, Trump accused the London Mayor of doing a ‘very bad job on terrorism’ and of being ‘very dumb’ during his last stint as President.

And the extraordinary outbursts against Mr Trump appeared to continue over the weekend, after Sir Sadiq’s warning of a ‘resurgent fascism’ ahead of his inauguration.

Seemingly in a fresh broadside against the returning president, Sir Sadiq urged Labour and the Left to ‘confront’ the forces of ‘reactionary populism’. 

‘The hard-right and far-right are on the march. These are deeply worrying times,’ the London Mayor wrote in a piece for the Observer.

Sir Sadiq’s comments risked inflaming further tension between Washington and Downing Street, and prompted a political slap down from a Labour cabinet minister.

And now, as Mr Trump prepares to start his second time in the Washington, Sir Sadiq appears to have toned down his verbal tirade against the 78-year-old. 

Ahead of today’s inauguration, Sir Sadiq insisted that as somebody ‘who believes in democracy, and voting and elections, we should recognise the fact that Donald Trump is the elected President of the United States’.

And he claimed he now ‘wanted to work closely with the American President’.

But he added: ‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this president is different from the last time he was president.’

Sir Sadiq and Mr Trump have made no secret about their disdain for each other.

They clashed as recently as May when he slammed the American politician’s jibe that London was ‘unrecognisable’ because the city had ‘opened its doors to jihad’.

As he celebrated winning a third term as mayor earlier this year, Sir Sadiq said Londoners had ‘slammed the door shut’ on Mr Trump’s ‘hard-right populism’.

And when Mr Trump romped home in the US election in November Sir Sadiq initially stopped short of congratulating him – although he did so later.

Sir Sadiq has also accused Trump of criticising him because of his ‘ethnicity’ and Muslim faith. 

Speaking on a podcast which aired in November, the London Mayor – a son of Pakistani immigrants to Britain – said he viewed the past targeting of him as ‘incredibly personal.’

‘If I wasn’t this color skin, if I wasn’t a practicing Muslim, he wouldn’t have come for me,’ he told the High Performance podcast, which interviews prominent people in different sectors.

‘He’s come for me because of, let’s be frank, my ethnicity and my religion.’

Writing in The Observer this weekend, Sir Sadiq added ‘these are deeply worrying times, especially if you’re a member of a minority community’.

Sir Sadiq also condemned ‘financial backers who selfishly choose to put the profits of their companies over the interests of our democracies’ in a dig at Elon Musk.

‘Progressives across the Western world face a century-defining challenge – and the stakes for liberal democracy couldn’t be higher,’ he wrote.

‘The far-right is on the march. These are deeply worrying times, especially if you’re a member of a minority community. As historians and commentators increasingly find echoes of the 1920s and 30s in the present day, we cannot afford to throw in the towel.

‘We should be in no doubt, this is a perilous moment. The spectre of a resurgent fascism haunts the West…

‘To ward off the far-right, we must be unflinching in defence of our democracy and values, and in our determination to enhance the welfare and material conditions of our communities.’

But his comments led to a scramble from Labour chiefs, who have been desperately trying to smooth out relations between the party and Trump after fiercely critical comments by senior leaders in the past. 

In 2018, now-Foreign Secretary David Lammy branded Trump a ‘woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath’ and a ‘tyrant’.

While a backbencher in 2019, ahead of Trump’s state visit to the UK, he posted on social media that Trump was ‘deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic’ and ‘no friend of Britain’. He has since dismissed his comments as ‘old news’. 

And yesterday following Sir Sadiq latest remarks, Treasury Chief Secretary Darren Jones was forced to bluntly reject the attack during a series of morning interviews, insisting the government respected Mr Trump’s mandate.

‘I don’t agree with that. President Trump won an enormous election victory in the US. As a democracy we support democracy and the American people elected Donald Trump and the Republican party,’ he told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Pressed on why Sir Sadiq was making such interventions as Labour struggles to forge ties with the incoming US administration, Mr Jones said: ‘He’s allowed to but I don’t agree with it. I speak on behalf of the government and we don’t agree with it.’

Khan’s previous outbursts have risked straining relationships between Labour and the White House.

Ahead of Trump taking the Oath of Office in Washington, Prime Minister Keir Starmer sent his ‘warmest congratulations’ as he sought to play to Mr Trump’s love of Britain.

‘With President Trump’s longstanding affection and historical ties to the United Kingdom, I know that depth of friendship will continue,’ the PM said.

Sir Keir added: ‘We will continue to build upon the unshakeable foundations of our historic alliance as we tackle together the global challenges we face and take our partnership to the next level focused on shared opportunities ahead for growth.’