Reform wants you to think London is a terrifying hellscape – here's why they're wrong

Independent

5 days ago

I write this from under my bed, in the dark, heart pounding, fearing for my life. Yet another wave of violent crime is rampaging through the streets of London, and as the sinister mob closes in on terrified residents like myself, I… wake up from this mad fantasy and realise it's just another sunny day in Hackney and everything's fine. In fact, I'm thinking to myself, what a brilliant summer we're having.
Not that you'd know any of this if you listened to the hyperbolic bleatings of those trying to convince you otherwise.
Whether it's Trump calling London 'a war zone', Nigel Farage or TV's tough guy-wannabe-mayor Ant Middleton calling it a 'murder capital', there's clearly a new script in play. London, they want you to believe, is out of control; a terrifying hellhole where every minute is spent holding on to your phone for dear life, or just holding on to your dear life, for that matter.
It's not the new script when you're living in this town, though – I write this from my kitchen table, a friend having just cycled round to bring back a Tupperware that I lent her after my backyard birthday party. (And I live on a street where they filmed a lot of the gritty drama Top Boy, so it's not as if everything's twee round here.)
My Polish, Caribbean and French neighbours have all been invited to my housewarming party, and have commented how nice it has been to see my garden coming along. Turns out they were more worried about my poor geraniums than the doom spiral headlines about what is going on outside in the hard-knock streets.
And yes, I am happy to be bringing up my child here too. As I write, my 13-year-old daughter is in town with her friends, using the underground and buses to celebrate the end of term at her outstanding state school. They may be shopping at Camden Market, perhaps chilling out on Hampstead Heath or swimming at the lido. I am not sure where they are, but I am sure they are all having a thoroughly lovely time.
Which is why I couldn't help laughing while watching a woman called Laila Cunningham telling Sky presenter Sophy Ridge about her fears for the city. Cunningham, a former CPS prosecutor and Conservative councillor, is now a councillor for Reform and on their law and order team. Fixated on London's descent into the pits of hell, she recounted a recent trip to Chicago and New York, where people we concerned for her safety and said to her: 'We've heard what's going on in London, are you guys okay?' A bemused Sophy Ridge responded by saying, 'We are okay though. I mean, I live in London?'
Thinking of something that must be protecting the presenter from the terror stalking the streets, Cunningham replied, 'You're okay because… maybe you come to work in a taxi!' Ridge barely stifled her giggles, as she explained that, no, she gets the bus.
The Reform types love to hate Sadiq Khan, who came into power in 2016 at a time of huge policing cuts. They conveniently forget that while the Met has had to cope with an increase in knife crime in the capital, 18-19 police forces have also reported year-on-year increases in knife crime, including Avon and Somerset (31 per cent), Cambridgeshire (14 per cent), and Hertfordshire (14 per cent).
Terrible things do happen, and poverty kills, but that's also true from Cornwall to Carlisle. And yet, London is being relentlessly talked up as a hellscape of epic proportions.
Ant Middleton, the former SAS telly personality, is in full rapture of this loopy narrative and how in a 'twisted grip', Khan's London is 'rotting from the core' and 'needs cleansing from the inside'. One piece of advice for free: don't start your campaign by slagging off London. You won't seduce a city like this one without loving it.
Yes, there are high costs, everyday chaos and cruel collisions of wealth and want. But even on the days we love to hate this dirty old town, something exciting happens and you realise you can't leave. God knows I've considered trading it in, often scrolling Rightmove to imagine a bigger house and a smaller mortgage elsewhere. But would those places let me go from a fascinating book launch to a funny film screening to an outdoor rave all in one night? How can I move from a place that houses 170 museums, 300-plus live music venues, and serves up everything from Shakespeare's Globe to Stormzy?
I've never even learned to drive, not even with a kid in tow – the taxi service of mum and dad isn't really a thing here. Cycling and walking are though, as 47 per cent of London is green space – parks, commons, heaths and canals.
And isn't it strange that those who spend their lives clutching their pearls over the 'state of things' and how 'multi-culturalism has failed' are often doing so from their crunchy drives in Guildford or Kent. That old-fashioned 'white-flight' doesn't seem to have changed much, and while our mash-up of cultures and backgrounds might not always be plain sailing, it definitely makes us stronger overall.
Londoners don't bat an eyelid at sharing their buses, schools, parks and supermarkets with newcomers from across the world. You are just as likely to be sharing your bus with a quantum physicist as a grime producer, and 300 languages are spoken here – more than in any other city on Earth. In an international city, the micro speaks to the macro – the children at my daughter's school have a global awareness and it shows. I did a BA in modern languages and still ended up less worldly at 23 than she is at 13. How is any of this bad?
I think back to what it was like when I first moved to London from Yorkshire in the mid-Nineties, jealously guarding my handbag on the tube for fear of the pickpockets I'd heard so much about. Thirty years later, I still haven't been pickpocketed once, and the only man who groped me in a crowd was a former boss at a Christmas party.
I'm sorry if anyone doesn't feel safe to roam London's historic streets, as Middleton claims, but I enjoy roaming them all the time. Sometimes on a nice summer's evening, I'll even walk back from a party, whether I'm 10 minutes or an hour away from my door.
In the Cotswolds or Somerset, there might not even be a pavement to walk home on. You're far more likely to end up in a dark ditch on the side of a dual carriageway. Here in the big, disgusting, beloved smoke we can at least count on street lamps and paths made out of concrete to keep us safe and the people to keep it interesting.