President Trump and Sir Sadiq’s spat dates back to at least 2015
Donald Trump has claimed London has become so dangerous that people are “being stabbed in the ass or worse” in his latest tirade against Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan. In an interview with GB News, the US President did not hold back in his long ongoing feud with Sir Sadiq by calling him “a terrible mayor” and “a disaster” despite being in his third term and hinting he plans on running for a fourth.
GB News interviewer Bev Turner Such put it to President Trump that ‘we’ve got such a crime problem in London’ without any reference to particular stats and President Trump responded by saying Sir Sadiq is a ‘terrible, terrible mayor’. He went on to say: “Look at the crime you have in London. My mother loved London, she loved the city.
“She’d always talk about how that was a different London than what you have today. Today you have people being stabbed in the ass or worse.”
While President Trump did not give any specific examples for his London knife crime claim, fewer homicides were recorded by police in the capital last year, new figures show. Figures from the Home Office show there were 101 homicides recorded by the Met Police in the year to June – down slightly from 107 the year before. Homicide refers to the offences of murder, manslaughter and infanticide.
Here at MyLondon we carried out a deeper dive look earlier this year into whether crime in London is going up or down. It is important to say comparing crime data is not straight forward. There have been numerous changes in recording methods, even under Sir Sadiq’s mayorship, making it hard to put statistics side by side.
In data from 2016 to 2024 by population:
- Knife and sharp instrument: Up 64 points from 105 to 169 offences per 1,000 population
- Homicide: Level at around 100 murders a year (110 in 2016, up to 141 in 2017, and down to 102 in 2024)
- Firearms: Down 4 points from 18 to 14
The Mayor’s press office has released data highlighting how London recorded the lowest number of homicides of under-25s for more than two decades last year. The Mayor’s office also says overall homicides in the capital are at a ten-year low, with London’s rate lower than international cities (Paris, Brussels, Berlin, and Madrid), and add that Londoners are, on average, less likely to be a victim of a violence with injury offence than across the rest of England and Wales (26.4 offences per 1,000 Londoners versus 31.88 for England and Wales).
Sir Sadiq previously told MyLondon he is living “rent-free in Trump’s head” after the US President made shocking comments claiming London wants to “go to sharia law” in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in September. He told MyLondon: “I’m not sure what it is people wonder why it is this Muslim mayor who leads a liberal, multicultural, successful, diverse city seems to be living rent-free in Donald Trump’s head.”
President Trump and Sir Sadiq’s spat dates back to at least 2015, when the Labour politician condemned the then presidential hopeful’s suggestion that Muslims should be banned from travelling to the US. The row intensified when the president criticised the mayor’s response to the London Bridge terror attack, and in 2018 Sir Sadiq’s office gave permission for an inflatable depicting President Trump as a baby to fly in Parliament Square as the Republican visited the UK.
Looking for more from MyLondon? Subscribe to our daily newsletters here for the latest and greatest updates from across London.
