Sadiq Khan slams Trump and Farage as UK metropolis’s homicide price hits 11-year low
Homicide in London has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade and the lowest murder rate in recorded history once population is taken into account, the Met said
Sadiq Khan hit back at London’s knockers(Image: Getty Images)
London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan has hit out at Donald Trump and Nigel Farage for portraying the UK’s capital city as a “dystopian, lawless place” after the murder rate in the capital dropped to an all-time low.
The President of the United States has laid into London in recent years, with Trump bizarrely claiming the city was moving towards Sharia Law and had hospitals “like warzones” and repeatedly attacking Khan, who he described as a “terrible, terrible mayor.”
And his biggest British fanboy last week said “we need to get rid of Sadiq Khan” as he claimed capital is “now in the grip of a crime wave run by foreign criminal gangs”.
But Metropolitan Police statistics released on Monday show the city’s murder rate is 1.1 per 100,000, the lowest since records began. By comparison, the figure for New York is 2.8 and Berlin’s is 3.2.
Writing in the Guardian, Khan said: “In recent years, politicians and commentators have sought to spam our social media feeds with an endless stream of distortions and untruths – painting a dystopian picture of a lawless place where criminals run rampant.”
Naming Trump and Farage, he added: “This latest startling statistic shows that those who talk down the capital at every opportunity couldn’t be more wrong: in London, the evidence is clear, we’re winning the battle against violent crime.
“This hasn’t happened by chance. It’s the outcome of a strategy we’ve pursued since the start of my first term as mayor: to be tough on violent crime, and tough on the complex causes of violent crime.”
There were 97 homicides in the capital last year compared with 109 in 2024, an 11% drop. In 2021, a record 30 teenagers were among the 133 killed, whereas eight teens were among the victims last year.
Khan added: “Of course, there is still much more to do. As far as I’m concerned, one homicide in the capital will always be one too many.
“As long as there are Londoners left mourning loved ones whose lives have been stolen by violent crime, we must guard against complacency.
“But today’s news confirms that we’re on the right path. Our collapsing homicide rate shows that the real London story is not the one spread by loudmouths and alarmists intent on sowing fear and division.”
Trump recently said London is so dangerous that “people are being stabbed in the ass” as he labelled Sir Sadiq “a disaster”.
And last week Reform’s London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham declared herself a “new sheriff in town” and said Londoners are pitied as the city is “no longer safe”.
Speaking on Sky News on Monday morning, Khan added: “We’re one of the safest, if not the safest, cities in the world when it comes to homicide. We’re safer than Paris, than Milan, than Rome, than Brussels, than Berlin.
“We’re more than 2.5 times safer than New York, more than five times safer than LA, 12 times safer than Chicago. Every US state has a higher homicide rate than London.
“And I think those that spread lies and misinformation have got a problem with London. What is their problem with London? In my view, we are a city that is liberal, that is progressive, that is diverse, that is successful. They hate that.”
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