Safety for Me, But Not for Thee: London Mayor Sadiq Khan Says He Needs 24/7 Protection Because of His Faith

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan speaks to delegates on the third day of the annual Labour Party
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The leftist mayor of London Sadiq Khan has admitted that he is protected by an around-the-clock security detail while he fails to protect the people from crime in the city which he is charged with governing.

Claiming that he needs protection because of the “colour of his skin and the god he worships”, Mr Khan told Labour Party members at a conference meeting in Brighton on Tuesday that he is currently protected by a team of 15 police officers “around the clock”.

The far-left mayor came under criticism last month for failing to live up to his professed green politics by taking a three-car convoy to take his dog for a walk in Tooting Common.

Mr Khan, who has past form in using his religious identity to score political points — notably in endless diplomatic spats with former President Donald Trump — said that it was his race and religion which necessitated his security detail, implicitly stating that multicultural London is not safe for people of his background.

“The mayor of the greatest city in the world needs protection 24 hours a day, seven days a week because of the colour of his skin and the god he worships, that can’t be right,” Khan said according to The Telegraph.

“I’m not going to allow these racists and these Islamophobes to intimidate me, and I’ll never bow to them,” he added.

During the address, Khan also claimed that members of his staff had been offered counselling for the “vitriol” which he had been subjected to. The London mayor said that he was inspired to share the alleged racial threats he suffered after seeing footballers in Britain adopt the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Pakistani-heritage London mayor said that he had initially refused police protection upon being elected to his post in 2016. However, he was later convinced that it was necessary in order to keep his family safe.

“When I was first elected, very shortly after, I was told that because of risk assessments I should have full police protection and I declined.”

Mr Khan added: “The game-changer for me was when the police spoke to my chief of staff and my wife to try and persuade me to accept, and the point they made, which was I may reject it, but do I realise that because of me, those who are with me may be at risk?

“Whether it’s my wife and kids or whether it’s my staff who I work with, and that was the reason why I said yes in the end.”

While Mr Khan and his family enjoy the safety and protection provided to him by his security detail, the ordinary citizens of the British capital have been subjected to spiralling violent crime during his tenure in office.

Since coming to power, London has seen over 100 homicides recorded in each of Mr Khan’s years in office.

Despite being in lockdown for much of last year, there were 126 killings in London, 15 of the victims being teenagers. Even though the UK has some of the strictest gun control laws in the free world, shootings in the capital rose by eight per cent, totalling 288 during 2020.

Khan’s time in office has perhaps been most defined by his inability to tackle knife crime in the city, which rose by over 50 per cent from the year before he was elected up until the year prior to the Chinese coronavirus crisis, rising from 9,700 incidents in 2014/15 to 15,600 in 2019/20.

Meanwhile, the London Mayor has focused attention on woke projects, including the creation of a Maoist-style panel to review supposedly offensive statues and monuments in the nation’s capital.

Khan has also come under criticism for “policing tweets” instead of streets, in reference to his Online Hate Crime Hub project, which began policing speech on the internet in 2016.

In May, Mr Khan was re-elected for a second term, after having his first term artificially extended by a year during the pandemic. While he narrowly edged out Tory challenger Shaun Bailey, the leftist mayor secured a smaller margin of victory than during his initial election.

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

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