SOME OPINIONS
Denigrating, misrepresenting and generally portraying London as an urban dystopia brought low by a combination of criminal immigrants and a traitorous “metropolitan elite” has been a transatlantic mob propaganda exercise for years.
It is orchestrated from the far side of the pond by Donald Trump, the World’s Biggest Liar, and enabled by Elon Musk, the World’s Saddest Turd. Their global millions of credulous fans imbibe and spread their effluent with glee.
In Britain, Nigel Farage has long been an eager traducer of the capital of the nation he reckons he should lead, devoting the whole of summer 2025 to informing people who enjoy nights out in the West End all the time that they know perfectly well they wouldn’t dare try such a thing, and claiming that Coventry Street being brightened during February by a few Ramadan lights means that London has banned Christmas. Fellow nationalist culture warriors, including, astoundingly, senior London Conservatives, are in plentiful supply.
These torrents of untruths may not be quite as effective as those spewing them intend: as On London has reported, the capital is now attracting more visitors, including more Americans, than before the pandemic, suggesting they haven’t bought into the “fallen London” narrative.
There is, though, strong evidence that it adversely affects beliefs about the city in Britain, especially among those most likely to regard Farage and his kind as straight-talking purveyors of Great Truths “the establishment” won’t tell.
SOME FACTS
The Policy Institute at King’s College has meticulously documented “misperceptions of crime, race, religion and life in the UK capital” as part of its wider Mistaken Britain project comparing public perceptions with factual realities.
“Misperceptions about London matter,” it says, “because the capital has become a lightening rod in our national debate – deeply connected to arguments about crime, immigration and the direction of our country – with the sense that ‘London has fallen’ now a recurring theme in political, media and social media narratives.”
The study focusses on beliefs about crime and safety in London, its demographics and its general quality of life. It notes that supporters of Reform UK and the Conservatives are those most inclined to believe negative and misleading accounts of London, tending to imagine a city that is far more dangerous and violent than it actually is.
Significantly, in view of Trump’s repeated, ridiculous claim that London is in the grip of Sharia law and the trash talk insults he directs at Sadiq Khan, those voters, says the report, “hugely overestimate the Muslim share of the capital’s population, and are more likely to believe there are areas wholly controlled by Muslims” with Sharia law holding sway.
The findings of two large national surveys conducted for the Policy Institute by YouGov, whose respondents included Londoners, showed that the British public think Londoners are “far more likely to be victims of crime than they really are”. The median estimate was that 30 per cent of Londoners were crime victims over a 12-month period, but crime statistics put the figure at 12.2 per cent.
They also wrongly assume that London experiences more violent and sexual crime than other regions, when in fact London’s rates of such offending are the nation’s lowest. And while London’s murder rate has been falling, a majority of Britons think it has risen.
The British public as a whole is unaware that the capital’s air quality has improved and guesses that it occupies a low position in the World’s Best Cities Index, when it actually comes top. Only 30 per cent recognise that London generates more tax revenue than is spent on it.
The study demonstrates how absorption of misinformation about London feeds into general attitudes to it: most of those mistakenly convinced that a large majority of Londoners are victims of crime consider the city to have changed for the worse since 2016; those with an inflated view of how many Muslims live in London – Reform supporters think it’s 50 per cent, not 15 – are the most likely to accept as fact the absurd fiction that the city contains Sharia-ruled “no-go areas”.
An annual feature of the London calendar is the Mayor of London’s Christmas Carol service, held at Southwark Cathedral. Sadiq Khan has presided at every single one of those occasions since he became Mayor in 2016. Yet the YouGov polling found that 41 per cent of Britons agree with the false claim that Khan “celebrates every festival except Christmas”.
The British public doesn’t get everything about London wrong. For example, by a small majority they correctly identify London has having the highest rate in the particular crime category of theft from the person, although 41 per cent wrongly think London has the most shoplifting. London’s rate is relatively high per thousand people – the second highest by region – but the North East’s is higher. And only six per cent of Britons thought that was the case.
But on crime in general, the Policy Institute finds that the British public across the board overestimates the risk to Londoners. This is particularly so of Reform UK supporters, followed by Conservatives, but Green, Liberal Democrat and Labour voters do it too. A very similar party political picture emerged when respondents were asked about the percentage of Londoners who are Muslim.
The report’s many other strands of inquiry include looking into where people get their information. Among those who wrongly think total crime in London has increased, Tik Tok-users emerge by a small margin as the most susceptible, though the figure for them is almost the same as for people who don’t use any social media platform at all.
The anti-London narrative is pervasive, and even Londoners themselves can be infected by it. Thirty-seven per cent of Londoners said they don’t feel safe walking alone in their area after dark, much less than the 60 per cent across the country who thought Londoners don’t feel safe. Yet Londoners themselves put the figure at 50 per cent.
Read the King’s College Policy Institute study in full HERE.
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