Sir Sadiq Khan’s fightback against the monstering of London by Britain’s Outer Right of Faragists, fascists and the fouler kind of Conservative has received a boost in the form of figures showing there were fewer homicides – a term covering murder, manslaughter and infanticide – over the summer months of 2025 than in any year since 2018.
Throughout August in particular, the “due impartiality” and pitchfork nationalist media alike have lavished coverage on ludicrous claims such as the Reform UK leader’s that no one dares wear jewellery in the West End after dark and the mendacious repeat slur that “Sadiq Khan’s London” is “lawless”.
These portrayals of London leading a national descent into rampant criminality, all of them linked with varying degrees of slyness to immigration, are at odds with even the police statistics Nigel Farage says he relies on (he dismissed the Crime Survey for England and Wales, held by crime trend experts to be the most reliable, as “based on completely false data”, but didn’t elaborate).
But now the capital has emerged from June, July and August, the period when homicides are often most frequent, with a tally of such grim deaths numbering 27 compared with, for example, 41 in 2021 and in the low or middle 30s for the three years after that.
The distinctive characteristic of homicide stats is that, unlike every other form of law-breaking, they aren’t open to concerns about routine under-reporting or unreliable gathering and processing that can be raised about police figures for other kinds of offence. When someone has been killed by someone else, that stark fact tends to be clear and undisputed.
The Mayor and the Met have also emphasised a reduction in the number of homicides for the whole of this year so far compared to this stage of last year, and falls over longer periods in the numbers of young victims. Add to these, drops in cases of theft from the person and personal robbery reported to the Met and a Notting Hill Carnival that failed to provide the carnage some had ghoulishly hoped for, and a sturdy counter narrative is underway.
Naturally, Susan Hall, the Donald Trump and Rupert Lowe-supporter chosen by the London Assembly Conservatives to be their leader, has dismissed the better news on homicides, preferring to talk up “knife crime”. This is statistical category includes offences where the assailant threatens to use a knife but might not even have one. It is, though, linked closely in the public mind with stabbings. Hall and her like are less interested in reality and remedies than in ramping up fear. Promiscuous use of the term “knife crime” serves that purpose well.
But what explains the fall in London homicides and, according to Met stats, other types of offence that cause anxiety as well as harm? How much of it can be credited to mayoral policies and Met policing, and how much to good luck that might not hold?
When crime figures are discouraging and the Mayor is held to blame – often, sad to say, by some or other twit scribbling for the Standard – it is important to point out that no Mayor of London has the ability to turn the crime tap off at will, whoever that Mayor may be.
Certain types of offending may increase or decrease for reasons beyond the immediate control of City Hall or the Met, sometimes linked to ebbs and flows in drug market competition, specific, highly local factors and so on. A rise in the numbers for a particular type of offence can indicate a greater public willingness to report them, or better Met success with detection. In any case, Mayors don’t sit in equivalents of Churchill War Rooms ordering battalions of bobbies around, and just as well – if they did, it would do more harm than good.
So, just as we should challenge political opportunists when the figures get worse, we need to pause before awarding plaudits when they are more encouraging.
Responding to the homicide stats, Sir Mark Rowley has said a “sustained crackdown on violent crime” has got results. Lib Peck, director of London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), set up under Khan, has highlighted early intervention with the young. And certainly, a combination of relentless, tightly-targeted enforcement and the prevention efforts of Peck’s department and its neighbourhood partners seems more likely to produce good outcomes than the evangelical, often devious, authoritarianism craved by the “lawless London” mob.
The longer positive trends continue, the stronger the arguments made for the Met’s tactics and the VRU strategy will look. In the meantime, social attitudes and conditions that nurture violence, including by men against women, are still present in the capital. As any serious crime-fighting mission understands, they need tackling too.
Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky. Photo from Greater London Authority.
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