London crime stats reveal an uncomfortable truth for Reform
Nigel Farage has attacked London Mayor Sadiq Khan over his failure to deal with crime and safety in London, but the city’s recently released crime statistics have rendered Reform’s arguments hollow.
Reform UK members, and a number of those among the Conservative Party, have long criticised Sadiq Khan for his management of London, specifically his lack of action to improve safety and cut down on crime in London.
This narrative was at the forefront of Laila Cunningham’s strategy for challenging Khan in the next London mayoral election.
Announced last week as Reform UK’s candidate for London Mayor, Cunningham focused squarely on the problem of safety in the capital, arguing that Khan had not done enough on improving safety in the city and that if elected, she would launch “an all out war on crime”.
“I will set clear, high-level priorities for the Met to focus on tackling knife crime, drugs, robbery, rape. And I will task the Met Police with targeting, hunting, and prosecuting rape gangs in London,” Cunningham said.
Farage has taken a critical view of modern London under Khan, calling the mayor deluded for thinking that it is the greatest city in the world.
He has regularly referred to increasing crime and a declining sense of public safety as symptoms of Khan’s mismanagement.
There is only one problem with the idea that Sadiq Khan has failed to deal with crime in London – the stats show that the opposite is true.
The latest crime statistics show that last year, London posted the lowest murder rate since records began, with homicides falling by 11% over the past year to a total of 97. This is despite London’s population increasing by more than half a million people over that time.
Violent crime also plummeted, and teenage homicide has fallen to its joint lowest level in almost 30 years.
In 2019, when the mayor’s Violence Reduction Unit was set up, the number of homicides of young people was three times higher than it is now, and hospital admissions of young people for knife assault has fallen by almost half since then.
London’s murder rate vs other global cities
A simple way to judge the safety of London is to compare its homicide rate against that of other global cities.
Despite the density and diversity of its population, London boasts the lowest homicide rate of any city in the United Kingdom, and 95% of its homicide investigations rank in a positive outcome, making Met detectives amongst the best in the world at tackling murder and violent crime.
In 2025, the homicide rate in London stood at 1.1 per 100,000 people.
Compare this rate to the following major global and US cities, according to data cited by the Mayor’s Office:
- Berlin – 3.2
- Milan – 1.6
- Toronto – 1.6
- New York – 2.8
- Los Angeles – 5.6
- Houston – 10.5
- Chicago – 11.7
- Philadelphia – 12.3
Data shows that public confidence in London policing is also rising, with trust in the Met and the assessment of its results improving steadily year over year.
In the face of the true story on London crime, Reform mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham’s promises to tackle the city’s knife crime epidemic and restore safety to its lawless streets ring somewhat hollow, if not disingenuous.
In a recent op-ed, Sadiq Khan responded to the constant denigration of London by figures including Donald Trump, Cunningham, and Farage, rubbishing claims that London was a warzone.
“Reform UK’s leader claimed last week that London was ‘in the grip of a crime wave’. Meanwhile, the party’s new candidate for mayor of London claimed that people pitied Londoners for living in a city that was ‘no longer safe’,” Khan said.
“Our collapsing homicide rate shows that the real London story is not the one spread by loudmouths and alarmists intent on sowing fear and division.”
