I love London. I’ve made a cherished home here, I’m raising my precious children here, I’ve even become a British citizen despite my Californian roots.
I get this city, as someone who was an outsider but is now very much a passionate advocate for the capital, setting up my business in the fringes of the East End and shining a spotlight on the place whenever I can, at home and abroad.
But London has changed in recent years. It has changed a lot, and not for the better.
The fear of crime has become a regular topic when I talk to fellow Londoners, with knife crime in particular casting a chilling shadow over too many people’s lives.
The statistics are disturbing: in London, in 2022-23, more than ten people for every 100,000 residents were admitted to hospital after being assaulted with a knife or sharp object.
The national average is 6.2 admissions – draw your own conclusions about how effective Sadiq Khan’s eight years ‘battling crime’ as London Mayor have been.
Brian Rose
GB News
Not to be too alarmist, but we can’t even trust the crime figures recorded by the Metropolitan Police.
Just 18 months ago the Met was placed in special measures because of a ‘litany’ of failings – including failing to report almost 70,000 crimes a year. The next time one of Khan’s many advisers tells you they have crime under control, ask them how they can even know, given how untrustworthy the official data are.
Crime is not the only subject weighing heavily on Londoners.
The city’s transport network, those arteries so essential for the smooth running of any modern city, have been blocked off or, in the case of our public transport, sorely neglected for years.
What has our transport system got to show for eight years of Khan’s Mayorship?
MORE AGENDA-SETTING OPINION:We have a creaking Underground network, underfunded and under-appreciated by the powers that be, with the Bakerloo extension plan stuck in a state of permanent limbo.
London’s motorists have been milked for every penny and then milked some more. The Ulez zone has punished some of the city’s poorest drivers, the Blackwall Tunnel is about to get tolls to pay for the Silvertown crossing, and money is being funnelled directly from drivers to fill the gaps in Khan’s catastrophically inadequate transport budget.
And don’t think you’ll escape the city’s transport woes if you take the bus. Khan’s controversial Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods have funnelled so many additional vehicles onto some arterial routes that bus journey times have quadrupled in these areas, according to TfL’s own figures.
Despite the damage that Khan has done to London, millions of us still want to live here. Unfortunately, finding a home you can afford has become harder, not easier.
Only weeks ago, a scathing independent review of Khan’s housing policies concluded that they had, in fact, been ‘frustrating’ house building.
Brian Rose
GB News
And how did his army of PR consultants respond to this criticism? They described it as a ‘stunt’.
The list of damage Khan has inflicted on London is a long one, certainly too long for this article. He has wasted eight years of opportunity for this city, posing for photos and passing the buck while London has slipped further and further behind other global cities.
Londoners and London desperately need a Mayor with a vision for the city, as opposed to an incumbent focused myopically on his own political career.
In the upcoming Mayoral elections, the capital has a chance to vote for change, and to kick out Khan’s cabal of self-interested loafers.
My manifesto outlines ambitious plans to give back core freedoms to Londoners – freedom from the fear of crime, freedom of expression, financial freedom and freedom from the basket case that is TfL’s funding model.
I have costed plans to put 10,000 more police on the streets, build 50,000 affordable homes by Christmas, and put TfL’s assets to proper use in a way that will benefit every Londoner.
I even have plans to give every person in the capital £100 worth of cryptocurrency – the LONDON crypto token – paid for by a one-off levy on bank profits. It’s time the financial system gave back something to those who helped bail it out, then watched as mega-bonus bankers continued to abuse their powers.
And I’ll fight for Londoners’ rights to free speech. It’s in the interests of big tech and big government to throttle our ability to communicate, and I have seen first-hand just how devastating the impact of being unfairly silenced can be.
London should be a global leader when it comes to fighting for such fundamental freedoms, but our present Mayor … well, as a career politician he is part of the problem, a big-politics player who hopes to get back into big government if Labour wins the looming general election.
In politics, as in everything else he has done while in office, Khan’s focus is on Khan.
If you don’t like what he stands for, if you are disappointed by what he has achieved, if you are frustrated by his appalling lack of ambition for our capital, then you know what to do.
On May 2, vote for change and kick Khan out.