The ability to dispassionately assess the crime rate in Britain is now close to an impossibility, thanks to the duplicity and the negligence of those charged with the data collection. One would be naïve in the extreme to believe that our governments report the facts black and white, and the Tories are no exception. The Conservative Party’s claim for instance, that crime has halved since they came to office in 2010, is at best an embellishment, and at worst an utter lie. Then there’s the UK constabulary, whose performance also rests on the reassuring presentation of such figures as there are: again, why would we expect them not to be massaged?
In the case of the police, the cover-up is compounded by the charge of negligence. The British Bobby has, to all intents and purposes, long-since given up on ‘low-level crime’ (what we used to call ‘burglary’ and ‘assault’). Despite various Home Office edicts, the police are increasingly refusing to record the ethnicity of ‘grooming’ suspects, drivers, or those stopped and searched in the majority of cases, as it just doesn’t like the conclusions. With a rock bottom 5% of all crimes solved, the public have simply stopped reporting crime – can you blame them?
However, in the case of violent crime we can be slightly more confident that we are getting to the nitty-gritty. In terms of policing, it’s far more difficult to ignore rivers of blood, nightly stabbings and teenage corpses than it is to turn a blind eye to a bit of shoplifting. Moreover, with the desire to massage and embellish the figures something of a universality, if one region of the country were to stand out in terms of crime, it might just be worth addressing.
Figures revealed by The Telegraph this week tell a story which should come as a shock to no one – “knife crime in London is rising at its fastest rate in five years”. While the average of 43 knife-related incidents reported to police each day might sound excessive, to be honest I’m surprised it’s not the hourly rate; judging by the resignation of the public in the face of zombie knives plaguing the capital, the complacency of the Old Bill whose job it theoretically is to round them up, and the increasingly brazen hoodlums who wield them in broad daylight with impunity.
Of the UK’s 43 constabularies, only two recorded a higher per capita rate of knife crime: Cleveland (the UK’s most dangerous place to live, according to the ONS) at 159 offences per 100,000 people, and the West Midlands at 162 – although this is a 4.7% decrease on the corresponding 2021-22 figures. For the Metropolitan Police, the figure is 154 incidents per 100,000, a total of 13,503 offences – almost a 21% increase on the previous year.
The return to pre-pandemic levels of violence in the capital is an obvious concern, and many disparate causes have been attributed to the uptick: the warfare between rival drug gangs, the influence of drill music and social media, and the declining prosecution rates which embolden criminals. If one were being slightly less politically correct, it might be worth adding the de facto outlaw of stop and search, the effect of limitless, unchecked immigration, and the kid gloves approach to policing ‘diverse’ communities. There is however, another major contributing factor: the man charged with the policing of London. The buck has to stop somewhere, and it should not be unreasonable to point out that Mayor Sadiq Khan is that somewhere.
Like his predecessor Boris Johnson, Khan is approaching the end of his first two terms as London Mayor, but that is where the similarities end. Say whatever you want about Johnson, but he had the common touch in office, and remained popular with the electorate – finishing his tenure with 54% of the public believing he had done a good job, as opposed to just 20% who disagreed. Khan, by contrast, already has an overall negative public perception: 48% who claim he is performing poorly, against 38% who think he passes muster.
We can compare their records on knife crime. According to the ONS, the number of knife crime offences fell for three years in a row in the Metropolitan Police area during Johnson’s incumbency: down from 14,159 in 2010/2011 to 9,680 in 2014/15. Upon Sadiq Khan’s appointment, there was an increase to 12,061 offences in 2016/17 and 14,695 in the following year. Khan may have falsely claimed to have decreased knife crime throughout his time in office, but the ONS was swift to disabuse him of this recently, with the cutting statistic that knife crime has risen 40% since 2016.
Khan is of course not responsible for the Britain he inherited, the perilous state of the economy, nor the general Tory ineptitude. He is however responsible for how he plays the cards he is dealt, and here my friends I believe we have a serious problem. While as Mayor, Boris brought positivity and a sense of British unity, Khan is nothing if not divisive. In fact, it is difficult to defend the accusation that he is anti-white, anti-male and anti-British. Khan’s villain of choice is the ignorant, working-class white male, whom he invariably employs in his misogyny campaigns; his official website believes that white families ‘do not represent real Londoners’, and his aversion to white bikini-clad models mysteriously evaporates when the models are non-white.
Then there’s Khan’s staggering lack of accountability. Anything it seems is to blame for the London crime epidemic, apart from him: Covid, austerity, the cost of living crisis. longer days, heatwaves and even school holidays have all been offered as alternative explanations.
Perhaps worst of all, is his seeming indifference to the continuous murder of children. When asked about the brutal murder of a 15-year-old child on her journey to school, Khan responded: “If the Conservatives want to use the murder of a 15-year-old girl as a political football that’s up to them. I’m not willing to play ball.” And while Khan may be perfectly willing to tweet his “thoughts and prayers” to the latest victim, it’s unlikely that these provide much solace to the grieving families, particularly since they are required by the next victim 24 hours later.
Of course, Sadiq Khan is just one man, and it would be foolish to attribute all the evils of a global city to him, or to pretend he should have all the answers. However, there is something insidious about a figurehead who prioritises ULEZ cameras above CCTV, pronouns above prosecutions, and selfies over safety. If you wanted a poster boy not just for broken Britain, but for a Britain which does not take itself in for repair, he’d be a shoo-in.
The bad news for London is that the mayoralty is unlimited. Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson each served eight years (two terms), but in theory Khan could go on until he drops. Despite the carnage on the streets and his negative polling, Khan is still incredibly 25-points clear of Conservative rival Susan Hall, who will challenge him for the mayoralty in May next year. To put that into context, odds-on favourite for our next Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is 1/4 on; Sadiq is a much safer bet at 1/7!
While I do not believe there is anything profound about Sadiq Khan the man, it is deeply profound for the nation that he performs so poorly, yet remains in post. For me, he is emblematic of a deeper malaise in Britain – a country which knows it is headed for the cliffs, but seeks no course correction. Nothing will improve for the lives of Londoners until Khan is removed from office, and that currently looks about as likely as a general election victory for the Tories.
Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West, and writes a Substack here.
This piece first appeared in The European Conservative, and is reproduced by kind permission.
If you enjoy The New Conservative and would like to support our work, please consider buying us a coffee – it would really help to keep us going. Thank you!
What makes the crimes figures and lack of police response even worse is when 6 of them can find the time to investigate and arrest a woman praying near an abortion clinic – and then do it again when the original case was thrown out!