There are, when it comes down to it, only two things that the Mayor of London has responsibility for: policing and transport. Alas, the present incumbent, Sadiq Khan, can’t get a grip on either.
Yesterday’s figures for crime on public transport showed an increase of 56 per cent in crime on the Tube (to 10,836 offences), with an astonishing increase of 83 per cent in thefts (to 5,378 offences). Crime has also risen on buses, though less dramatically. Granted, passenger numbers have increased but not by anything like as much as crime rates.
And let’s not try to put it down to the cost of living crisis, shall we? Plainly, there are people out there who haven’t been taking to heart the mayor’s heartwarming poster campaign, Be Kind. In fact, did anyone?
That’s the thing. There is a real problem right now on public transport and it’s getting worse. Almost a third of us feel unsafe on public transport, according to yesterday’s figures.
There is a real problem on public transport and it’s getting worse yet the Mayor has been conducting inane campaigns
Yet the Mayor’s response has not been to increase visible and proactive policing and staffing. His most visible and proactive initiatives have been to conduct inane campaigns to make us more keenly diverse, more gender and ethnicity-aware. Today, as I got off the Underground, I encountered a poster of a random young man with the cheering slogan, We All Make London. Sorry? The crucial line was at the top; Mayor Of London, it said.
Look, we all know that we all make up London, thank you. We don’t need to labour the point. But what we actually do need are measures to make it more likely that when we reach our destination on the Underground, it’ll be with all our possessions intact.
Is it too much to ask Khan to focus on what actually bothers us, rather than what emphatically doesn’t? If you gave pretty well any commuter a choice between the Mayor using his — our — resources to identify himself with inclusivity, or on making us safer when we travel, I don’t think any of us, young or old, would hesitate.
The crime figures on the Tube here don’t come anywhere near as bad as the situation on the subway in New York, where you can be menaced by aggressive crack addicts, but that’s about as much as you can say.
Thefts are, inevitably, focused on the places where tourists gravitate — like King’s Cross, Oxford Circus and Leicester Square — which is itself depressing. Welcome to London: hold onto your mobile phone.
Mick Lynch, the combative general-secretary of the RMT was right that “we need decent staffing levels” on the Tube so we can feel safer. Me, I was all against taking staff from ticket offices to roam freely around stations, which had the inevitable effect of making them difficult to find when you really need them.
As for the British Transport Police, which costs us £180 million a year to run, I can’t remember when I’ve actually seen them lately, unless they’re all working undercover. You too?
Granted, it’s up to each of us to help each other. Once, when a man standing by me was putting his hand inside my handbag — which was on the ground rather than on my lap — it was a kindly woman next to me who told me. But the primary responsibility for dealing with crime on public transport lies with Transport for London — motto, Every Journey Matters — and ultimately with the Mayor.
Like I say, Khan has only really two things to think about: policing and transport, and by the measure of yesterday’s figures he’s got his work cut out to get to grips with both — even after seven years in the job.
I’ve always found him affable and pleasant in person, but I’m afraid it takes more than a cheerful presence to compensate for the dispiriting reality of crime on our public transport.
