ANDREW FISHER on the London Mayor’s battle against crime and the often warped perception of crime
There has been a succession of far-right figures who over recent years have posted online, sometimes frequently, about the supposed horrors of “lawless London”.
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From failed Reform candidate Matthew Goodwin to Croydon’s own Chris Philp, there have also been some from further afield, such as US President Donald Trump, who seems obsessed with London and its Muslim Mayor.
Trump even claimed, entirely falsely, that Sadiq Khan’s London “wants to go to Sharia law”, while the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, described London as “extremely dangerous”.
Susan Hall, the Conservatives’ candidate for London Mayor in 2024, focused relentlessly on crime in the capital. Her campaign to replace Khan failed.
This week, the London Mayor has fought back against this kind of narrative, which he described as “a gross distortion of reality”, with social media posts describing London as “one of the safest global cities”.
Elsewhere, he’s written: “London’s haters can’t stand our success… Neighbourhood crimes are down significantly too, with 35,000 fewer offences on our streets.”
A spokesperson for the Mayor also told PoliticsJoe: “Musk, Farage or the captains of online disinformation … want to paint London as a dystopian hellhole where crime is increasing. These latest stats on high-volume crime show that the opposite is true.”
Even Grok – the AI tool on Musk’s own social media platform – backs up the Mayor of London and the achievements of Londoners and the Metropolitan Police.
I dug out the latest crime statistics for England and Wales, which found overall crime in London is down 3% (compared to 1% in England & Wales as a whole). Sexual offences are up 6% in the capital compared to 4% nationally, while robbery is down 5% in London, but up by 10% across England and Wales.
For Grok’s sake: even Musk’s online tools contradict their owner’s dystopian crime claims
Of course London has its issues – what city doesn’t? But when you compare it to the rest of the country, or even the rest of the western world, London is not doing badly. London’s murder rate is lower than every major American or European city – from New York to Paris, from Chicago to Berlin.
We have much to be proud of in London, and the constant attempts by right-wing politicians to denigrate the capital seem to owe more to the failure to get elected in our city than to any reality.
Unsurprisingly, their concern about crime in London don’t ever mention the multiple investigations opened by the Metropolitan Police into the allegedly dodgy finances of Reform UK, its leader, its MPs and its donors.
But stats only prove so much. Crime is always very much a personal tragedy – whether that’s serious crime like murder or rape, or the still traumatising experience of being mugged or burgled. Anecdote always beats data, and that is why the Mayor faces an uphill struggle.
Any individual case of violence is traumatising for the individual, and no amount of saying, “London’s murder rate is lower than Madrid or Los Angeles” is much consolation for the bereaved next of kin, if their loved one has been killed on London’s streets.
If you or a close friend or family member has been the victim of crime, it can have lasting effects on you and those around you.
A couple of years ago, I was in my neighbourhood Post Office when an attempted armed robbery occurred. Thankfully I was physically unharmed (as was everyone else), but it did shake me up at the time – and I happily hung around to give the police a witness statement.
In step: Croydon MP and policing minister Sarah Jones, here with Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, has praised London’s police for falling crime rates
Recently the child of a friend of mine was mugged at knifepoint (just outside of London’s boundaries), but that too made me feel more conscious of both my children’s safety and my own.
As it happens, robbery is up 35% in the last year in the police authority where that incident occurred. But a personal story will always be more poignant than cold data.
The Mayor of London and the Metropolitan Police are right and justified to point out their successes in the capital – where there have been 35,000 fewer offences in the last year – and murder is at its lowest rate on record.
They are right too to challenge the inaccurate and scaremongering depictions of our capital city, increasingly posted by the far-right on social media and usually left unchallenged.
The issue of crime is serious (whether murder or mugging), and deserves better than to be used as a political football. That also requires caution when making triumphant assertions that crime is being tackled – which is cold comfort and will ring hollow to the many thousands of people who are victims of crime every year.
On perception, crime is cited by 22% of Londoners as a Top 3 issue facing the capital. That is down from 29% a year ago, but up from the 12% who said so 10 years ago.
Which all goes to show, crime and the perception of crime are two different things – and the latter is too easily shaped, often perversely, by social media.
The battle over crime will continue to be weaponised, but it shouldn’t be too much to ask that politicians and the media do so accurately and with sensitivity.
Andrew Fisher also conducts a podcast interview with a leading academic, sector expert or political figure. - This month’s Andrew Fisher Interview was with Fiona Fletcher-Smith, the head of giant housing association L&Q, who has some forthright ideas about how to end, or at least reduce, the housing crisis.
- To hear this in-depth and informed interview, click here
- From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn
- Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
- Burnham’s challenge is to rebalance Britain yet cherish London
- Burnham’s election could make all the difference in Croydon
- Perry has stabilised council finances in state of perpetual crisis
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Crime isn’t just a political football. It’s also means of favour and control.
Crime that isn’t enforced sends the message that while technically the matter is against the law, the action concerned is in reality legal, particularly for the right people, organisation or country e.g. a driver breaking the speed limit, a well-connected aristocrat whose mother paid millions of pounds to settle a rape case, a water company pouring human waste into rivers and onto beaches, people living in this country alleged to have taken part in IDF war crimes in Gaza and still walking free.
“Crime” can be used as a tool of oppression. One year ago, Keir Starmer’s authoritarian regime decided to make it a criminal offence for anyone to state “I support Palestine Action. I oppose genocide”. People have been arrested simply for stating that.
Thatcher’s claim that “Crime is crime is crime: it is not political” was just a soundbite