The other day Home Secretary James Cleverly had a good line on Mayor Sadiq Khan. He said that Khan spoke more about Gaza than he did about black kids being stabbed to death in London.
His point was that with the make-up of the capital, Sadiq believed there were more votes in worrying about Muslims, than there were worrying about young black murders.
Khan’s people described the allegation as vile, but didn’t contest the basic argument. That’s a shame. The lengths of Khan’s speeches on both subjects would make interesting politics.
That all changed yesterday. Suddenly Khan was all over the news. Why would that be? The reason, with less than 48 hours to go to the Mayoral election for London, a 14-year-old boy was killed and four others (including two police officers) were injured by a man on a rampage with a sword in Hainault, East London.
Unusually there was video of the man swinging the sword, which meant images of the crime were coming into the homes of voters. That could affect how people might view Khan’s right to stay in power after eight years. So, what did Khan do? He swept into action.
He was on every TV news broadcast explaining his thoughts were with the child’s family and further, the police officers were ‘’so brave’’ in disarming the knife man. Unusual for him to praise the police.
There was of course a reason for all this PR and I felt this sat very uneasily with his actions towards crime over his last two terms.
Her are the stats; Knife crime in London is 20% up while in the rest of the country it’s down. And in one shocking poll, one in five of Londoners reported they have been attacked or threatened with violence in the last five years.
With the explosion in knife crime, you would have thought that as Mayor he would have pressed the Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to increase stop and search. But no, apparently Khan believes that it’s racist.
Since the vast majority of the attacks are black kids on black kids how on earth could that be the case. In fact, the numbers for stop and search have fallen over the year. And, as you would expect, knife crime has gone up.
Muggings are a fact of life in London. I note that when even the boxer Chris Eubank has his bag stolen, you know there must be a problem. Even Indian businessmen complain they can’t wear their expensive watches in our capital for fear of them being taken. I find that shocking. Dreadful PR for our country.
Only a week or so ago Mayor Khan was so dismissive of knife crime that he told his Tory rival Susan Hall, who raised concerns about the explosion of crime; ‘’ I think the Conservative candidate should stopping watching the Wire’’ – a reference to the urban US drama based in Baltimore in the 90s.
How would he feel about that remark today? What is appalling is that Khan has such a large lead in polls that he is going to be Mayor for another four years, making 12 years in all. And can anybody honestly say that London has become a better place to live and work.
What is his legacy? He renamed the train lines, expanded his punitive Ulez car tax, let a Donald Trump blimp float over the city, and allowed a Jewish minority to be terrified to visit the city centre.
But suspect his proudest boast, during his time in power, is that he received the accolade of being dubbed the ‘’knife crime capital.’’
So when you see him on your screens, dropping a verbal tear, for a family who have just lost their son through being knifed to death, do reflect on the fact that it was under his watch that stabbings became an everyday event.
The capital would be a more attractive place if Khan hadn’t been mayor for all these years as he doesn’t take knife murder as seriously as clearing old bangers off the road.
What is even worse is that there is no way of stopping him from being forever if he so chooses. There is no limit to the number of times that he can stand.
As somebody said on X/Twitter the other day; Only Hamas can beat Labour in London.
