‘Get Sadiq Khan OUT!’ Frightened Londoners voice anger as soaring crimewave grips capital
LONDON Mayor Sadiq Khan has been brutally criticised by Tory councillor Shaun Bailey for his lack of leadership and his failure to take swift action to curb the surge in violent crime in the capital.
By CHARLOTTE DAVIS AND NIKOLAS DOST
Express.co.uk
Fri, Aug 31, 2018
There have so far been over 100 suspected murders in the capital since the start of the year and London’s murder rate overtook New York for the first time.
Conservative Party councillor Shaun Bailey, who is one of three short-listed candidates hoping to secure the Conservative nomination in the 2020 London Mayoral election, expressed his shock at the harrowing statistics and said Londoners “need a leader”.
He told Express.co.uk: “The challenge for the Mayor is he promised when he ran to be a mayor that would focus on violent crime. It took 18 months to get a strategy.”
London Metropolitan Police statistics show that since Mr Khan took office in May 2016, criminal offences between July of that year to July 2018 have seen a 9.2 percent increase.
Mr Bailey insisted the London Mayor’s violent crime strategy is only short-term and “slightly shallow”. He added: “With this spike in crime it looks like the mayor was caught on the back foot.”
Mr Bailey said one thing Londoners want most from Mr Khan is “leadership”. He added: “There is no silver bullet to solving crime, particularly violent crime in London.
The former advisor to David Cameron said there needs to be more guidance around mental health, prevention for young people and work preparedness in an effort to cut young adults’ exposure to crime.
He said: “Because it is so disparate, we need a leader – someone who can hang those things around. I think up until now, and let’s see if it changes, the mayor has been quite weak on that and we’d hope that he would improve because this is beyond politics. This is literally the lives of Londoners so we do need a resolution here.”
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