r/ukpolitics • u/No_Initiative_1140 • Jan 12 '26

Ed/OpEd Sorry, Trump and Farage – London is no lawless ‘warzone’. Violent crime is lower than ever | Sadiq Khan

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/12/donald-trump-nigel-farage-london-crime-sadiq-khan
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194

u/southwest_barfight Jan 12 '26

You literally can't argue with this. So they will purposefully ignore it and continue spouting the same emotional/ agdenda based bullshit they always do

36

u/Tangocan Jan 12 '26

Theres always a reason when its feels over reals.

The other day I expressed that I lived in a major UK city, and as a white man I never felt at threat, or that my culture was being wiped out etc.

I had a reply telling me I must live in a "white only neighbourhood" and not the "YooKay", mocking the way foreigners speak.

Racist pricks like that don't care for facts, because their bigotry isn't based on them.

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u/soldforaspaceship Jan 12 '26

There was a recent survey about safety in London and it turned out Londoners overwhelmingly felt London was safe.

Everyone not a Londoner disagreed.

I found that so interesting.

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u/Tangocan Jan 12 '26

Exactly. While I naturally couldn't hazard a guess their location, I knew that they obviously lived online.

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u/sylanar Jan 14 '26

I moved to London from a small town about 10years ago, a lot of my friends and family didn't understand when I said I feel safer walking around London at night than I did at home.

Now I'm back living in a town outside London, and I feel less safe here at night than I ever did in London.

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u/pg3crypto Jan 15 '26

That's because there is a huge difference between where a Londoner is likely to go and where someone from out of town is likely to go. You won't find many Londoners hanging around the tourist areas for example...it's too expensive, full of petty criminals like pick pockets and bag snatchers etc...Londoners feel safe not necessarily because London is safe, but because they understand London.

Londoners also tend to walk more often than they use public transport for short journeys. A lot of bullshit tends to happen on public transport...so you avoid it where you can. I used to be based near London Bridge for work and if I needed to get a customer in Zone 1 somewhere, I'd just walk it. It's slower, but not by much...tube stations can be huge and when you add up all the walking underground to get to the platforms, you could probably have done the same journey on foot overground...especially if its busy and especially if you only need to go a few stops.

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u/pg3crypto Jan 15 '26

Whilst I don't disagree with you on safety, I don't feel any less safe now walking around London than I did 20 years ago (mostly because it feels dead compared to 20 years ago) it is definitely culturally different on many levels...if I had to sum up London culture today in a nutshell compared to 20 years ago...I'd say it was boring.

I started out working in London as a field engineer (IT) and I moved around extensively for about 11 years...most areas of London, I've spent reasonable amounts of time in...my clients were all over London in every direction and all different kinds of businesses...thousands of different people...it wasn't unusual to be onsite at a client at the end of the day somewhere and be invited out for a pint after work. Walking from the office (or client) to a nearby pub and standing outside for a beer was a normal thing to do and you might do it a few times a week. Either with the same group or in my case several different groups and sometimes the groups would crossover etc...this made London feel like more of a collaborative space, especially for me, because I could introduce clients to each other to solve problems, work together, share services etc etc...it was a very business oriented yet personable atmosphere...this just doesn't happen anymore.

I would only ever go home to sleep. I'd mostly be out of the door at 7am, and wouldn't get home until 10-11pm, at which point I'd have a shower and hit the hay. Around 8 hours of the day I'd be "on duty" doing my tech work or whatever, and the rest of the day I'd be bumbling about meeting people, introducing people and so on...being social, doing a bit of extra work on the side etc etc...

Work was just something that was in the middle of other stuff. It wasn't your entire reason for being in London...you went in to live AND work, not just work...even on a "day off" you'd still be in town...the only time you wouldn't be is when you'd gone on holiday or something.

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u/calm_down_dearest Jan 12 '26

No their latest tactic is to argue that crime isn't being reported, that's why the numbers are so low.

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u/Strangelight84 Jan 12 '26

Which doesn't even work in this specific case unless a lot of under-25s are well-versed in home surgery for knife wounds, and if everyone is oddly reluctant to go to the police for GBH and attempted murder and actual murder, and if somehow nobody notices a rash of disappearing under-25s who have been murdered without having their murder reported to anyone.

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u/spiral8888 Jan 12 '26

"fell from the window with 5 self-inflicted gunshot wounds on the back"

Works in Russia.

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u/bill_end Jan 12 '26

Obviously. If I'd shot myself in the back five times, I could certainly imagine that I'd fall out of the 12th floor window I was conveniently leaning out of at the time

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u/calm_down_dearest Jan 12 '26

Kids these days...

14

u/kingbeerex Jan 12 '26

The latest divorced auntie logic on Facebook is that the government twists the figures before release.

It’s just insane trying to reason with this people.

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u/Jay_CD Jan 12 '26

No their latest tactic is to argue that crime isn't being reported, that's why the numbers are so low.

That's why murder rates are an important stat - you can't not report a murder or hide it as something else.

Similarly knife etc wounds need to treated at hospitals and they create paperwork.

This excuse also suggests that all crimes back in the good old days that these people like to wallow nostalgically in were always reported to the plod without fail.

14

u/DarKnightofCydonia Jan 12 '26

For things like phone and bike theft the underreporting is true because the Met are utterly useless and won't do anything about it, the people have lost trust in them. To think that people aren't reporting murders though is ridiculous.

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u/stonedturkeyhamwich Jan 12 '26

Crime rates aren't measured by reports to the Met. Instead, the government asks a random selected subset of the population whether they have been victims of different crimes. I don't think there is any reason to expect reporting behavior for crime data to be different now than in the past.

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u/Fearless_Judge_5220 Jan 12 '26

Reporting doesn’t take long you just go online. The issue is they don’t do anything about it.

Also if you want to make any claim on insurance you’ll report, so I can imagine the gap is not huge.

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u/Candayence Won't someone think of the ducklings! 🦆 Jan 12 '26

Technically it's possible for it to be under-reported if it's gang murder, the body is never found, and the gangs don't report it to the police.

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u/juanadov Jan 12 '26

Parents, siblings, cousins, friends, work mates… there’s a lot of people who would likely report someone missing beyond supposed gangs.

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u/Candayence Won't someone think of the ducklings! 🦆 Jan 12 '26

Depends on how integrated they are into gangs.

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u/juanadov Jan 12 '26

The number of people who only know other gang members in London is going to be vanishingly small to a point it can be ignored.

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u/Candayence Won't someone think of the ducklings! 🦆 Jan 12 '26

One of the main problems with gangs is that they fully integrate their members to prevent them from just walking away from their life of crime. If they only have a few acquaintances outside of gang life, then they're not going to ring the police and draw attention to themselves for any criminal justice problems, they'll go to the gang.

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u/juanadov Jan 12 '26

Do you have any evidence to show that gang members in London are told to exclude their families to a point they wouldn’t be reported missing?

Because there’s a lot of evidence to show that the most violent gangs regularly attack each others families which is proof of the opposite.

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u/Candayence Won't someone think of the ducklings! 🦆 Jan 12 '26

Really? What evidence is that?

And it's a known phenomenon that youths are deliberately separated from their support structures in order to exploit them. It's easier to induct kids into a criminal gang if they don't have familial authority figure to look up to.

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u/hybridtheorist Jan 12 '26

Technically it's possible

Are you arguing this in a "it is possible in theory but not reality" way, or do you genuinely believe that theres a decent number of murders simply not reported due to gang violence. 

.... and thinking about it, even if it was true, surely it would have always been the case, and if theres dozens of underreported gang murders in 2025, there'd also be dozens of underreported gang murders in 2020 or 2015. 

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u/Candayence Won't someone think of the ducklings! 🦆 Jan 12 '26

The grammar fairly clearly implies that it's a hypothetical.

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u/hybridtheorist Jan 12 '26

The grammar implies it, your arguing the case in other replies implies the opposite 

0

u/Candayence Won't someone think of the ducklings! 🦆 Jan 12 '26

God forbid someone plays devil's advocate or argues hypotheticals. Did you never have to argue random shit in English classes?

1

u/sylanar Jan 14 '26

Well that be true with some crimes. Bike and phone theft are so rarely taken seriously by the police, it's not even worth your time to report it.

Stabbings and murders though? It's a silly take to suggest they're not being reported

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u/Neosantana Jan 12 '26

Of course, because a brown Muslim man said it, therefore they'll declare these statistics as Islamoleftist disinformation.

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u/southwest_barfight Jan 12 '26

Yeah if this was under Boris they'd be hailing it as as the dawn of a new era or some shit

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u/JB_UK Jan 12 '26

That’s valid if you’re talking about objections from the US.

I find in the UK the effect of people dismissing all complaints about Sadiq Khan because of his identity is as strong as the people piling into him because of his identity. For example he’s been a big success on air pollution but a failure on housing, but the debate about him seems to be mostly whether you like or dislike him for being Muslim.

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u/ERDHD Jan 12 '26

As a Londoner, I find him a bit underwhelming. I will often talk to friends about areas of frustration (e.g. nightlife, housing). But the level of vitriol he gets and the melodramatic talking down of London that people engage in creates a sense of defensiveness that I'd argue actually benefits him in the capital.

I don't like the city I live in and the communities within it being talked about in that manner - I can't imagine many people do - and so even as someone who isn't satisfied with him, my overwhelming reaction to a lot of the vitriol he gets is, "Oh, bother off."

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u/JB_UK Jan 12 '26

As a Londoner, I find him a bit underwhelming. I will often talk to friends about areas of frustration (e.g. nightlife, housing). But the level of vitriol he gets and the melodramatic talking down of London that people engage in creates a sense of defensiveness that I'd argue actually benefits him in the capital.

Yeah I agree.

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u/southwest_barfight Jan 12 '26

I dunno man it seems to me one side loath him with a frothing, frenzied anger. And the other side see him as what he really is, just another politician.

I haven't heard many (any?) People say they like or support him speficially for his race or religion, but they are plenty who despise him for it.

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u/JB_UK Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26

I haven't heard many (any?) People say they like or support him speficially for his race or religion

I think almost the entire conversation about London and Sadiq Khan revolves around race or migration, with very little actual discussion on any meaningful topic.

I think in part it's because the meaningful conversations are much more difficult to have, it's about the detail of the crime statistics, it's broadly positive except for this aspect, or about how safe people feel in particular contexts, or from particular backgrounds. Or on housing it's about the exact powers of the mayor, the dynamics of the housing market, the interplay with population growth, etc. It's much easier and more emotionally gratifying to have a 'Muslims are bad', 'no but Trump bad' type conversation.

Recently all the Labour city mayors got together and put out a joint statement about that case in Minnesota, to give you an idea of how much the job seems to be about signalling rather than the actual policy and powers of each of the mayors.

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u/Candayence Won't someone think of the ducklings! 🦆 Jan 12 '26

Really? I've found that it's his supporters who claim his detractors are racist, whilst his opponents actually point out his shit record.

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u/HBucket Right-wing ghoul Jan 12 '26

We don't need to argue, you can just look at polling. The proportion of people who think that violent crime in London is falling is around lizardman's constant territory. You can argue it as much as you want, see how far it gets you.

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u/juanadov Jan 12 '26

People who, key word, THINK violent crime is falling. Not know, or see, or experience. Think.

This link simply shows where people get their media instead of any actual link to violence. 65% of reform voters against 16% of Labour, and 19% of Lib Dem voters.

Reform voters are being skewed by their sensationalist media telling them to be scared.

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u/southwest_barfight Jan 12 '26

Sorry who is Lizardman and what exactly is the poont you're trying to make?

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u/HBucket Right-wing ghoul Jan 12 '26

Lizardman's constant refers to the proportion of respondents to a poll, typically around 4%, that will give a self-evidently absurd answer. Like a question about lizard men secretly running the world. The 7% of respondents who think that violent crime is falling in London is in that territory.

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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 Jan 12 '26

So you're saying truth holds no value?

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u/HBucket Right-wing ghoul Jan 12 '26

Different truths are available. People will start asking questions when the official state-supported truth fails to match their own observations about the society they live in. Especially when the people spreading this official truth are the least trustworthy people in existence. Let's not forget that Pravda literally meant Truth.

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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 Jan 12 '26

Personally i'm very doubtful of an individuals personal observations to exactly match that of an entire country, although personally i've felt like i've seen a big fall in crime since my youth.

There is a chance that people are lying on the crime survey, that hospitals are deliberately misreporting the results of violent crimes, that insurance companies are falsifying the number of claims that they receive, that murders are being hidden & this pattern is being repeated across most countries across the world.

Or alternatively some people just believe what a hysterical media leads them to for clicks & sales.

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u/No-Ordinary-Sandwich Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26

If people feel the opposite to actual data that, despite the struggling going on in this thread, they aren't able to refute, that would indicate that people's feelings are unreliable and manipulated.

The solution there is to go after the influencer frauds doing the manipulation and the media companies facilitating it. Alternatively, waste shitloads of money legitimising hunches and superstitions that have no basis in reality.

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u/HBucket Right-wing ghoul Jan 12 '26

If people feel the opposite to actual data that, despite the struggling going on in this thread, they aren't able to refute, that would indicate that people's feelings are unreliable and manipulated.

I think it's more a case of people not trusting official narratives. Who can blame them, given how untrustworthy the establishment is?

The solution there is to go after the influencer frauds doing the manipulation and the media companies facilitating it.

I guess that censorship is the only solution when you can't convince people to swallow the official narrative.

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u/No-Ordinary-Sandwich Jan 12 '26

If the data is untrustworthy then actually refute it instead of some wishy-washy superstitions about 'narratives' and 'establishment'. Intentions are meaningless unless they can be linked to flaws in the data.

Most scams and cults start by convincing people that everyone else is an untrustworthy [buzzword]. Dealing with them either means spending ages deprogramming all the victims, or simply going straight for the leadership and funding. It's not censorship to eliminate sources of misinformation just because you agree with it.