The Tory attack ads are tone deaf – but we do need tougher policing

Sadiq Khan has blamed funding cuts from the national government for rising knife crime in London painted a dystopian, dark, sinister picture of the country he was about to govern. Of collapsing families. Of children trapped in poverty without a decent education. Of rotting inner cities and abandoned factories “scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation”. Of criminal gangs that had “robbed our country of so much unrealised potential”.

Which brings us to the mayoral race between Sadiq Khan and Susan Hall. The incumbent Khan is seeking an unprecedented third term in London’s City Hall this May, hoping to surpass the two served apiece by Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson. Take the mayor’s decision to expand free lunches to all primary school pupils at state schools across London regardless of income, at a cost of £140m a year. Instead of offering a £1,000 bung to middle class parents, he could have designed a more targeted scheme, with more money left over for policing. The same is true for his decision to freeze Tube fares across the board at a cost of £123m.

On the surface, it’s a done deal with a 24-point lead ahead of his Conservative rival Hall. But there has beenby the independent Centre for London think-tank also suggests that this surface-level popularity is deceptive. Aside from the cost of living crisis and the NHS — both of which are mostly out of the mayor’s purview — housing is the most important issue for 39 per cent of Londoners, while crime is cited by a third as the most pressing issue.

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