Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has described Donald Trump’s claims about violent crime in London as “complete nonsense”.
The US president last month claimed the capital is so dangerous that "people are being stabbed in the ass" as he continued to criticise the city's mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan.
He said: “Look at the crime you have in London. My mother loved London, she loved that city.
“Today you have people being stabbed in the ass or worse. Your mayor is a disaster, he’s a nasty person.”
President Trump continued: “He’s letting crime go. You have areas in London and in Paris where police don’t even want to go anywhere near those areas. “
Asked about those comments by LBC’s Nick Ferrari on Friday, Sir Mark said: “There’s no no-go areas, that’s completely false. How anybody in America can suggest the UK is violent is completely ridiculous.”
“The homicide rate in London is lower than every single US state. It’s lower than all their big cities. I think the murder rate in New York last time I looked is about three or four times higher than it is in London per capita.”
Figures from the mayor’s office for policing and crime, which compare the 12 months ending in August with the previous 12 months, showed there were 8,749 fewer crimes that resulted in someone being hurt – a drop of nearly 12 per cent – across the capital over that time.
Sir Mark added: “This trend of trying to rubbish London, some of which is driven by politics, we who are proud Londoners need to fight back about it.”
On Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer belatedly defended Sir Sadiq Khan after Trump branded the London mayor “horrible, vicious, disgusting”.
In an attack which reignited his long-running feud with Sir Sadiq, the US president also called him a “disaster” and suggested he has done a “terrible job”.
In an interview with Politico, President Trump said: “He’s a horrible mayor. He’s an incompetent mayor, but he’s a horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor. I think he’s done a terrible job. London’s a different place. I love London. I love London. And I hate to see it happen.”
And he claimed of Sir Sadiq, the city’s first Muslim mayor, whose parents came from Pakistan, “gets elected because so many people have come in [to the UK]. They vote for him now.”
A spokesperson for the prime minister described the comments as “wrong” – 24 hours after No 10 failed to defend the mayor.
On Tuesday, Downing Street would only say the PM had a “strong” relationship with both men.
But a day later, the PM’s press secretary told reporters: “Those comments are wrong. The mayor of London is doing an excellent job in London, delivering free school meals in primary schools, cleaning up London’s air with the world’s largest clean air zone and starting record numbers of council houses.
“The prime minister is hugely proud of the mayor of London’s record and proud to call him a colleague and a friend.”
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