Is Sadiq trying to gaslight Londoners about crime?
The Mayor is desperate to convince Londoners that crime is falling, despite all the evidence to the contrary, writes James Ford
London does not have a crime problem; it has a misinformation problem. That is the assertion of the capital’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan. Clearly wounded by President Trump’s recent claim that “crime in London is through the roof,” Sadiq is desperate to convince you that crime has fallen in the metropolis.
In recent weeks, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) has released a barrage of statistics to insist that certain, key crime rates in London have fallen in the past year. According to City Hall: murders are down, burglaries are down and theft is down.
There is a whiff of political desperation to the Mayor’s protestations. MOPAC is keen to point out that, in the first nine months of 2025, the number of murders in London was the lowest it has been in the first nine months of any year since City Hall started tracking the capital’s monthly murder rate in 2003. But why is MOPAC so keen to just focus on the first nine months of every year? To say this sounds selective is an understatement. I don’t know if the murder rate rises or falls in the last quarter of every year, but it does not inspire confidence that the mayor was not willing to wait until January and compare the murder rate over a full year with that in previous years. All this smacks of a desire to rush out some hastily cobbled together good news to respond to bad headlines, Trump’s criticism and the apparent flight of wealthy Londoners.
A premature victory lap
At the very best, even if some crime is down in 2025 compared to 2024 or 2023, it is premature for the Mayor to be taking a self-congratulatory victory lap. MOPAC’s dodgy dossier of selective murder statistics still shows that London has averaged nearly 96 homicides in the first nine months of each year of Khan’s tenure at City Hall – notably higher than the average of 85 homicides in the first nine months of each year under Boris Johnson.
So far, it does not seem like Londoners are drinking MOPAC’s Kool-Aid. A YouGov poll in September found that 51 per cent of Londoners thought that violent crime in London was increasing, 26 per cent thought it was staying about the same whilst just 13 per cent thought crime was falling. (Even Labour voters were three times more likely to think that violent crime was rising in the capital than falling).
Nor does it seem like MOPAC has convinced Fleet Street or the High Street that it is winning the war on crime. Not only has Curry’s installed purple adverts warning customers to ‘Mind the Grab’ on Oxford Street, but Harrods has given in to customer demands to offer unmarked shopping bags so its shoppers are not robbed upon leaving. Headlines in recent weeks have highlighted that there is a hate crime every 20 minutes, that London accounts for one-third of all knife crime in the UK, and that Londoners are increasingly afraid to use the public transport system. Even The Guardian reported that recorded crime is up 31 per cent, and violent crime has risen 40 per cent, describing phone theft as “a menace”.
For the Mayor, not only is the idea of ‘Lawless London’ a myth, repeating it kind of makes you a fascist
Of course, the Mayor’s aim is not to establish a new narrative on crime in the capital but rather to simply discredit and shut down the widely-held view that London has become a crime-ridden Gotham on his watch. In Khan’s London, to suggest that the capital is gripped by an epidemic of violent crime is not just untrue and unpatriotic, it is a deliberate, dangerous, Trumpian trope. For the Mayor, not only is the idea of ‘Lawless London’ a myth, repeating it kind of makes you a fascist. That is why you shouldn’t ask the Mayor about grooming gangs. As a Londoner, you might think you have been stabbed, mugged, robbed or burgled in recent years, but really you are just a Faragist stooge intent upon undermining London’s cosy, cosmopolitan conceits (and the mayor’s re-election prospects).
The Mayor’s efforts to gaslight the capital seem unlikely to succeed. The fear of crime in London is not just a cliché confected by right-wing populists, it is a palpable reality that is dictating Londoner’s shopping habits, travel trends and voting behaviour. Even if some crimes are really down (and stay down), others definitely are not. Londoners are smart enough to know the difference between lies, damned lies and the Mayor’s crime statistics.
James Ford was an adviser to former Mayor of London Boris Johnson