Let’s be honest here, Sir Sadiq Khan isn’t really that impressive a politician. He appears to have no very strong convictions, is no great intellect is not a particularly good public speaker and had made little achievement of note before becoming the titular head of the world’s greatest city.However, he is a courtly, softly spoken family man whose political opponents acknowledge his graciousness and decency. His centrist, non-confrontational style of politics is no longer the norm but many of us regret its passing. He is deeply engaged with the management of London and seems to take as much joy from new bus routes and fare arrangement as he does from the more glamourous aspects of his job. If you were to choose a word to describe him it would probably be ‘inoffensive’ unless of course you are the kind of person who finds it offensive that someone of Pakistani Muslim origin is in a position of responsibility.The frothing at the mouth hostility he seems to inspire from certain quarters is deeply suspicious. It is part of a broader narrative of ‘London is Falling’ in which our city is collapsing into lawless chaos, with widespread no go zones and radical Muslims are introducing Sharia law. We hear this consistently from MAGA politicians and far right accounts across social media.The main accusation against Sir Sadiq is that, like the Pope, he is soft on crime. London has too much crime and certain offences are rising significantly however, the Mayor of London’s record is probably worth a B plus score – could be better but not a bad effort. Our murder rate is at an all time historic low and rape and sexual offending is well below national averages (who would have thunk it with the majority of illegal immigrant residing in the capital!).While the priority always should be these more serious crimes, the picture on non-violent offences is mixed. Shoplifting is a national problem but particularly bad in London. It is debatable whether the Mayor should involve himself too deeply in the operations of the Met but the root cause of this increase surely must be the overcrowding in prisons which means that fewer repeat offenders are being locked up to come back and nick stuff to fuel their addiction.Car crime is also an issue, and once again it seems daft to expect the Mayor to be patrolling the streets of Chiswick at night to protect our cars – but some people apparently do. We live in a society with increased income disparity where people with very expensive cars neglect to secure them properly and leave valuable stuff inside them. Not much the Mayor can do about this but sign up to MetEngage and you will get regular alerts about offending of this kind.The Mayor’s better than average performance on crime over his three terms has been achieved despite a squeeze on funding for the police far greater than anywhere in the country. The Met previously was largely funded direct from central government but this has been reduced in real terms and has not been adjusted to account for population growth so we currently get a much lower per capita funding for the police than other parts of theUK. Add to this the recruitment difficulties brought about by high living costs – it would be entirely understandable if London was seeing a much larger rise in crime than elsewhere – in fact the rise has been below the average.The main reason for this relative success is that Sir Sadiq has covered the funding shortfall from his own resources. At the start of his first term, very little of the police budget was funded by the Mayor’s precept but in the most recent year it has risen to 27% We might begrudge the extra rise in our Council Tax that has resulted but we wouldn’t like the alternative to this funding not being provided to the police.Despite this qualified but very evident progress on crime, the narrative against Sir Sadiq continues to be pushed very hard. As has been pointed out, reporting in the woke, Libtard Spectator has identified that much of the ‘London is Falling’ narrative comes from bot farms in countries like Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Somebody is funding this with the aim of undermining our confidence in our institutions and democratic processes. The people who are pushing these distortions hardest range from the Steve Bannon wing of the MAGA movement, previously Orban funded far right groups across Europe, the Chinese and the Russians – exactly who it is doesn’t really matter, we just need to be aware of what is happening. Sadly, it seems to be having some effect – the same narratives cross into angry Facebook groups and the Daily Mail and are parroted by useful idiots in this country. I am prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to people who don’t live in London but people who do, and can walk out of their front door to see that it is not true are not just useful idiots but quislings and traitors who are putting their own prejudices ahead of the national interest.When I say that all right thinking Chiswick residents support Sir Sadiq, I don’t mean that we all vote for him (although most of Chiswick has in his three election victories). What I mean is that, whether you are Labour, Tory, Green, Reform, Lib Dem, or uninterested in politics, you recognise that intemperate attacks on the Mayor of London originate from hostile foreign entities whose ultimate aim is to undermine our democratic freedom. If you aren’t pushing back on their lies you are appeasing the enemy.
Francis Rowe ● 10d