British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has appointed London Mayor Sadiq Khan to the House of Lords as one of 26 new life peers, in one of his final acts before stepping down. The announcement, made on Thursday, includes senior figures from politics, philanthropy, social action, the military, and business.

Khan, a former Labour MP for Tooting, is midway through his third term as London mayor, first elected in 2016. His appointment is among Starmer's last decisions before Andy Burnham is expected to succeed him as Labour leader on Friday and as prime minister on Monday, July 20. Outgoing prime ministers traditionally recommend political peerages.

Of the 26 nominees, only 16 were nominated by Labour, five by the Liberal Democrats, three by the Conservatives, and two are crossbench peers with no party affiliation. Labour's nominees include human rights campaigners Parvais Jabbar and Saul Lehrfreund, co-founders of the Death Penalty Project, and Cathy Ashley, a families' rights campaigner and former head of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Former Chief of the General Staff of the British Army General Sir Patrick Sanders was among those nominated by the Conservatives. Economist Tim Leunig, chief economist at Nesta, was nominated by the Liberal Democrats. One of the two crossbench peers is former senior judge Sir Brian Leveson, who led the 2011 Leveson Inquiry into press conduct after the phone-hacking scandal.

Starmer did not nominate anyone from right-wing Reform UK, which now has seven MPs in the House of Commons following Nigel Farage's resignation. Farage criticized the move, saying: 'Once again, there is nothing for Reform and we get an even more unrepresentative upper house.' Before these appointments, the Conservatives held 246 seats in the Lords, compared to Labour's 216, giving the opposition a numerical advantage.

Source: www.aljazeera.com