As London stabbings reach ten per week – will someone please end this Khanage?
TEN people a week are getting stabbed in London but the city mayor has far more important matters on his mind, apparently.
Crime in the capital is up ten per cent since 2020, while there was “no statistically significant change” nationally.
You are four times more likely to be robbed in London than anywhere else in England according to the ONS, while tents litter landmarks and our famous parks.
So what has Sadiq Khan been up to this week? Well, moaning about Brexit mostly.
While even Sir Keir Starmer is astute enough to realise the voters and public have moved on, Labour’s most senior elected politician is still pumping out the remoaner greatest hits.
And as ever with Brexit, there’s some funky maths and dubious stats flying around.
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Apparently the UK economy is £140billion smaller because we quit the EU, with 300,000 fewer jobs in London.
Citing a report that taxpayers forked out £55,000 for some pointy heads to cook up, Khan says it is time to kowtow once again to Brussels.
It will come as no surprise that the study’s authors, data analysts Cambridge Econometrics, also lists the European Commission among its clients.
But City Hall should ask for its money back.
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It appears to completely ignore the fact the country was locked down for months on end and Londoners have barely bounced back to pre-pandemic levels of spending, drinking and actually turning up to work.
And it uses grossly inflated expectations of what growth would have looked like had those beastly voters not had their say.
Khan appears to suggest Brits were too thick to know what they were doing because the debate around Brexit needs to be “informed by evidence, not prejudice”.
Ironic from a man peddling his own selective stats to rerun a long-settled issue.
But amazingly it wasn’t even the daftest thing he’s said all week.
No, for his next trick the mayor announced he will be installing fake steering wheels on the driverless Docklands Light Railway so children can pretend to drive the train.
Is there a more perfect metaphor for Khan’s entire tenure in City Hall?
Pretending to drive but actually asleep at the wheel.
He is up for re-election in five months and all the polls suggest Khan is going to walk it despite being very obviously beatable.
The charge list is long: Vanity fireworks asking grateful Londoners to thank him for the brilliant job he does while breaking almost every promise he made.
He pledged “zero strikes” but public transport has been out for 117 days since he took office in 2016.
When the Tube does run, crime on it is up 80 per cent.
Last week’s strike was only avoided by paying off the union dinosaurs with £30million from down the back of the sofa.
How long before they come back for more? And where is the opposition to the cardboard mayor?
It is 111 days from polling day and the Tory candidate Susan Hall is nowhere to be seen.
She seems like a perfectly nice Assembly Member, but I am yet to find anyone in the party who genuinely thinks she will win or really is the best the Conservatives can do.
It’s not too late to pick a new candidate, and not giving Khan a proper run for his money is a dereliction of duty.
The greatest city on the planet deserves a proper contest.
NEXT week is make or break for the PM when his immigration bill returns to the Commons.
The Home Office has already selected the first 100 migrants to deport to Rwanda, with a flight list of “bomb-proof” candidates who have no grounds for appeal ready to go within “hours” of the bill passing.
Wheels up!
GOVE HOMING IN ON PROPERTY TAX
A STATISTIC to chill the bones of every Tory MP: In 2019, the age at which voters were more likely to vote Conservative than Labour was 46.
The current age at which voters are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour is 65.
And there’s a very obvious reason for that: Housing.
Ministers privately concede the party is too in hock to big house-building donors and scared of noisy nimbys in the South East blocking developments.
But I hear March’s Budget could see some movement – if the Treasury can be convinced.
Michael Gove is pushing for a tax on foreign ownership of property, dubbed Stop The Jets.
Perhaps the revenue could pay for that inheritance tax cut No10 is still eyeing up?
But time is running out.
Polling from the More In Common group shows almost half of those who voted Tory in 2019 think the Government is handling housing badly.
Labour has overtaken the Tories with homeowners, with a 23-point Conservative lead over Labour among homeowners at the last election now replaced by an eight-point Labour advantage.
RISHI Sunak wants Boris Johnson to campaign for him at the General Election.
Given the spectacular bad blood between the pair, that’s a big ask.
The PM has already hired one of his predecessors – David Cameron – and wants to go to the country hammering home “successes” from the last 14 years of Tory rule with a big display of happy families.
Just don’t expect Liz Truss to feature much.
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And I hear BoJo might take some convincing.
Word is he’s about to go tonto about the PM’s landmark, must-pass Rwanda Bill.