Trump’s Vendetta Against Khan Can’t Disguise the Fact He’s Not a Good Mayor

Andrew Gilligan is a writer, and a former political advisor in Government.

Sadiq Khan has been out and about this holidays, blaming Donald Trump’s “jealousy” of London for his attacks on the place, and saying that populists, domestic and foreign, only diss the capital because they are “worried about London’s success.”

Magaworld’s portrayal of a hellscape London is a caricature. But it is doing real damage, and Khan bears some of the blame. Early on, he realised that biffing (and being biffed by) Trump was political gold for him. Asked about Khan’s election as London mayor in May 2016, Trump, then the likely Republican presidential nominee, was actually quite positive. “I’m happy to see that,” he said. “I think it’s a very good thing, and I hope he does a very good job because frankly that would be very, very good.”

Khan’s response was graceless, calling Trump a “buffoon” with an “ignorant view of Islam” which “plays into the hands of extremists” and criticising his mooted ban on Muslim visitors to the US. “I hope he loses badly,” he said. The battle was on. “He doesn’t know me, hasn’t met me, doesn’t know what I’m all about,” retorted Trump. “I think they were very rude statements and, frankly, tell him I will remember those statements.”

Now, both men go out of their way to wind each other up. Trump has said some ridiculous and offensive things about London and its mayor. But Khan, too, has several times initiated new bouts of hostilities even when there is no obvious provocation from Trump. In 2019, as the president was about to arrive for a state visit, he wrote an article comparing him to Hitler and Stalin.

Khan and Trump are quite consciously profiting from all this.

For all their differences, both are the kinds of leaders who need, and define themselves against, their enemies. Both are the kinds of politicians who blame other people for all their problems. But London has been the loser. Trump’s disdain for it and Khan, so carefully stoked by the mayor, has inspired a vast constellation of Maga folk and right-wing US media outlets to trash the city, gaining really significant traction in one of our most important investment and trading partners.

Blaming everything on bad actors also allows Khan to avoid dealing honestly with London’s crime and disorder problem. His approach is the classic three-step of liberal denial first seen in the immigration debate 20 years ago: refuse to think about an issue that’s uncomfortable for you (which itself, of course, allows it to get worse), bring out some stupid soundbite (in this case, London being the world’s “number one city”), find some selective statistic to say everything’s fine.

As Khan always says, London does have far fewer murders than any big American city. But not many people in either place get murdered. And on the crimes that most worry people, London is worse. Robberies are roughly double New York’s – 32,600 in the year to November 2025, against 15,000 in New York in the year to December, though the two cities’ populations are about the same. In the last six months, two separate visiting Americans have asked whether they are safe to walk around Mayfair. Yes – but it’s not actually as dumb a question as I first thought.

On those streets with all that street crime, I never see any police, ever. And that’s very specifically a London thing. Other British cities, such as Newcastle, where I was before Christmas, see the value of a visible police presence. Fare dodging is rampant. Parts of the Tube are covered with graffiti – something a competent mayor could fix in months. Tent cities proliferate. The roads are badly managed, with rampant roadworks, uncoordinated closures and restrictions not enforced.

But Khan would rather spend his time chest-beating on X about issues beyond his control – and the only management he ever practices is media management. Last year, a rise in the congestion charge was announced on the same day as Khan issued a report, under embargo, demanding the legalisation of cannabis. In the next day’s papers, as was doubtless intended, the second of those stories swamped the first.

London is, I think, a successful city. But it is less successful because of Khan. And the Tories have to accept that we, too, are partly to blame for this depressing state of affairs.

Not running serious candidates against Khan has let him get away with being rubbish. As I wrote last June, the party gave up on London as irredeemably left-wing. But it is, in fact, the most religious part of Britain. It is the most entrepreneurial part of Britain. It has millions of socially conservative voters in stable families, the largest number of higher-rate taxpayers and the lowest Reform vote in the country. It could be a relatively bright spot in this year’s local elections, and it is not inconceivable that we could recapture the mayoralty.

Nothing’s visibly happened in the seven months since. Maybe there are things behind the scenes I don’t know about. But Delta Force is not going to abduct Sadiq Khan (and, no, I’m not suggesting they should.)

We have to do something about him ourselves.