Not my words but written about London by someone who actually lives and works here:
London has long been the mirror through which Britain sees itself. Today that reflection is being deliberately distorted. No city in modern Britain has been more misrepresented, more cynically weaponised, or more dishonestly described than London has been by the far right.
They call it unsafe and chaotic, overrun by crime and migration. They claim whole districts have been lost to “no-go zones,” that the capital has fallen to disorder, that its diversity has weakened it. These are lies created to serve a purpose. When facts cannot sustain an ideology, fear becomes their substitute.
For those of us who live here, we know the truth is the opposite. London’s homicide rate is at its lowest since records began. Violent crime has fallen across every borough. The city is safer than Paris, Brussels, Berlin or Madrid. Walk through Tower Hamlets, Brixton or Tottenham and you find no Sharia patrols or forbidden quarters, only people living their lives in one of the most vibrant and creative cities on earth. The far right depends on myth because reality refutes them.
London’s diversity is not a weakness to be managed, it is a strength that sustains it. Its global culture, its languages, its food, its art and its tolerance are what make it a world city while others decline. That strength unsettles those who need division to thrive. They cannot build a movement on hope, so they turn to resentment. They take familiar symbols of Britain and twist them into warnings against difference.
What they call concern about crime is really an effort to control how people live and who belongs. Every fabricated “no-go zone” or exaggerated statistic is a political tool, designed to pit neighbour against neighbour and present diversity as decay. The goal is to make fear feel patriotic and whilst this is happening across the country, it’s particularly prevelant in London.
Sadiq Khan sits at the centre of that campaign. The far right and much of the Conservative press use him as a vessel for their anger towards London itself. They accuse him of destroying the city, of siding with extremists, of caring more for Muslims than for the rest of its residents. They circulate fantasies of “Londonistan” and “third-world chaos” to turn his faith into a political weapon. Yet the voters who know this city best have rejected that story again and again. Khan has been elected three times, in 2016, 2021 and 2024, each time by clear margins.
He remains the first and only mayor to win three terms, supported by more than a million Londoners in every election. His victories have come despite the noise, despite the smears, and despite relentless attempts to make him a symbol of decline. Londoners know what they see each day. The city is working, and Khan remains part of that success, not the cause of its problems.
Now, Reform and others are building their message on a lie. They want to turn London into a symbol of everything they claim has gone wrong with Britain. They call it a hell hole to make diversity look like decay, to convince people that a city full of difference cannot work. None of it is true. Their story is not about London at all but about how to divide the rest of the country from it. They need resentment more than they need answers, and they have built their politics around that need.
I have lived in London for years and I know their story is false. I have lived in Woolwich, the Isle of Dogs and Uxbridge, in neighbourhoods that show the city’s scale and variety. I see London each day in the early rush of commuters, in the shopkeepers opening shutters, in the conversations between strangers who will never meet again. It is a city held together by shared purpose, not fear. That is what the far right cannot bear. London’s resilience cuts through everything they claim to stand for. It proves that people from different backgrounds can live and build together, and that cooperation always wins over fear. The far right cannot accept that truth because it ends their story. They rely on division to survive, and they will go on spreading resentment until they are stopped.
